Hamilton! (Not Alexander)

Our first full day in New Zealand was just about perfect. We awoke in Hamilton, a city of about 170,000 southeast of Auckland, and the third fastest-growing urban area. We had been in Hamilton briefly in 2015 when we had a layover during our bus trip from Taupo to New Plymouth. At that time, we were exclusively in the CBD and had a nice walk on part of their river walk and then a nice lunch at a cute, local restaurant.

This time our motel was a bit outside the CBD but very close to Lake Rotoroa with a great path around it. I ran around it early in the morning and told Bob we needed to go back during daylight to really see it. We were both glad we did.

That was a little bit of awesome we thought. What could top that? Well, I don’t know about topping it (and does it really need to be a competition?), but the Hamilton Gardens that we visited next was pretty cool.

Hamilton Gardens is a public park which is owned and managed by the Hamilton City Council! It is free to the public. It is on the banks of the Waikato River (the one we had walked along downtown on our earlier visit). It includes a plethora (my term) of enclosed gardens, a lovely information center, a great lawn (where they were having a kite festival for kids), and cafes.

We were astonished at the number of gardens each somewhat hidden so that you think you are entering a small area but it just keeps going. They had gardens representing Japan, China, India, England, Italy, native New Zealand, plus modern art gardens and a sustainable food garden. We’d love to return in 2020 when their Surrealist garden will be done.

We left lovely Hamilton about 12:30 to head to New Plymouth. The distance between the two is only 147 miles but takes over 3 hours because of the VERY curvy and hilly terrain. To make it “worse” it was beautiful as well, but you can’t really enjoy it (especially if you’re driving) because you have to focus so much on the road. All-in-all a beautiful day.