We had tickets to the Chinese Lantern Festival thanks to the Wonderfuls, and the temperatures were down to a mere 90 degrees this evening, so we went. And so did everyone else in Saint Louis.
And they all wanted to take photos. I don’t blame them. The lanterns were indeed lovely at night. I could have tied up the traffic by taking photos too, but instead just look at this:
There are over 20 different towering illuminated lanterns, scattered through the botanical gardens. All the photos I pointed you to show one lantern per photo, but in reality there are three or four lanterns in your field of vision at any time. And the gardens weren’t designed to be used at night, so all the light is thrown by the lanterns. Oh, and you had some wine. And it is still pretty hot. And you get in to that shuffling mob mentality and you can’t see the path and there are giant Buddhas to your right and giant pandas to your left and every dragon is moving and it is just like a legal acid trip.
I found it very disorienting.
5 responses to “Chinese Lantern Festival at the Botanical Garden”
That looks awesome. I wouldn’t go, because it’s outside, and there are other people there, but just the same – awesome.
Because of my old fartitude I avoid events like this.
Tami – Yeah, awesome would be just me and the lanterns.
Hattie- I’m doing it to stave off Gary’s Old Fartdom.
I love MoBot but I didn’t find the lantern festival all that interesting. I guess I expected it to feel a little more like they were made by craftsmen and a little less like they were put up by a carnival company. It was hot and there were booths hawking goods and the lanterns just weren’t that cool. The only interesting ones were the ones made out of bottles or china – the rest were very unimpressive.
Amy – I just realized the porcelin dragon – from CHINA – was made out of CHINA. Hahahaha. I laughed as loudly as I did when I made my “disorienting” joke. Get it? Get it?