vilakins | Photos from last weekend

Last weekend I went down to Hamilton to combine seeing a friend with a birthday treat. We had lunch on the paddle boat Waipa Delta, then wandered round the beautiful Hamilton Gardens (see this page for a description of the different international gardens there). As I already took pictures last time, I was more restrained. All my photos (25 of them) are in this LJ gallery, but here's a selection.

Stuffed Jeeves - This life-size Jeeves was in the Waipa Delta booking office / souvenir shop. He was made by the Fabric Art Company whose 'Stuffed Stuff' exhibition I saw years ago: scenes of soft padded domesticity. My favourite was the fat middle-aged couple in the bath, complete with satin taps and water. :-)

View of the Waikato River taken from the front of the steamboat Waipa Delta after an excellent stone-grill lunch.

The Roman pool is opposite the Italian Renaissance garden. Romulus and Remus were missing - stolen - last year. I was pleased to see that they were either returned or replaced.

The Indian Char Bagh garden was much more colourful last year, so this time I turned around and took a picture of the gate visitors come in through.

I took four of this (all in the gallery) and had a hard time picking one to show here.

They had a cow in Roman armour - a gladiator cow; how could I resist? - in the Waipa Delta souvenir shop! Why? Because the Waikato is dairy country.

So I bought it as a birthday present for myself. It's the right size for my Roman legionaries too. Here's one with it. :-D

[Edit:] These cows are collector's items; check out Cow Parade (life-sized statues painted by local artists; they had a Cow Parade in Auckland a while back, which I saw). Mine is in there with a story about it. It's called Russell Cow!!! :-) I have decided however that mine is called Maxima.