I have a Top 5. I’m not talking about MySpace, or boys, or people at all. It is my 5 favorite things – excluding people and the Word – which I venture to find for a cheer-me-up and inspiration:
- Glitter
- Every color all at once
- Sunrises and sunsets
- Clear sky of stars
- Flowers
That last one, flowers, is my Dr. Feel Good. When people travel, they often have one constant that they try to check off to compare all the cities that they have jet set to. Commonly, that constant is trying a traditional dish of food. When I traveled, it was my goal to find each city’s best and brightest garden. The results were eye-bursting, heart-thumping, and soul-moving.
Thus, I present The Top 5 Habitats of Flora and Fauna in the World:
5) Bologna’s San Luca: After climbing up the longest set of porticos in the world, my friends and I made it to San Luca, an ex-monastery that overlooks my favorite city and second home, Bologna. We picked yellow dandelions and then found an alternate route which wound through the mossy hillside.
4) Cinque Terre’s Trails: Cinque Terre rewarded every step I took with an exotic flower to smell, a pinterest-worthy scene to view, and a fresh gasp of Italian-air. The hiking trail named Sentiero Azzurro connects the five villages. You can see the multicolored villages from a bird’s eye view as you are on the trail, then as you descend down you enter the the village pathways (no cars or roads) that are filled with bustling Italian kids trying to kick a soccer ball past their opponents and into a home-made goal made by fishing nets. The white paths wind down to a pool-size harbor where you can find the native fishermen and look out on the Ligurian Sea.
3) London’s St. James’s Park Lake: Every section of this park presented a different way to enjoy it. There was a minimalist café on the lake, a maze of vibrant violet and brilliant blue orchids that stretched their long pipes toward the sun, outdoor plush mats to watch the clouds pass through the in-between of earth’s crust and heaven, and a huge open-air gazebo that inviting everyone to step up and salsa with strangers.
2) Palace of Versailles’s Gardens:
By the number: 1,976 acres; 200,000 trees; 210,000 flowers planted annually; 50 fountains; 620 water jets; 1 grand canal.
I spent an entire day winding around walls of blooming ivy and the manicured lawns accented by irises… and I only saw a small fraction of these magnificent gardens, designed originally for the pleasure of King Louis XIII and then the rest of the following Kings of France- and of course the cossetted Marie-Antoinette. I couldn’t help but feel like royalty in the unending green grounds.
1) Rome’s Rose Gardens: This place shook my bones while I was navigating the social and spatial challenge of a peregrination to Rome alone. After a long day of wandering through the Coliseum and purposefully losing myself in Paul the apostle’s stomping grounds, the Roman Forum, I slogged back to my Airbnb. That trek was interrupted when I saw a sea of blooming roses. Upon further examination, I found out that these gardens contained almost every identified rose in the world (over 1100 are represented)! People explored every bushel to compare swirling colors and aromas and find out where they uniquely originated. In the background you can even see the ancient Coliseum standing indelibly. I lay down next to my favorite flower and lifted up a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, because his grace is steadily showering me everyday, and strengthening my heart pervasively.
