Saturday Morning Run Through Hagley Park

I'm pleased to repot that New Zealand has had a reprieve from cyclones and Once in some-number-of-hundred Year Storms.  The days have been sunny and pleasant, and the nights clear, if not a bit freezing. I'll take it. We'll call it "summer".

Anyways, I was on a fantastic morning run through Hagley Park (my favorite place for baby duck sighting) on Saturday, and I was hoping to take lots of pictures of the fall colors. It seems that I was too late though as I found just evergreens and a lot of bare branches.

Pretty none the less.

 As I rounded the back of the botanical gardens I was surprised to find a new building by the river. It turns out that the new visitor's center opened a couple of weeks ago. Who knew?

This is what a mere $16 million looks like in building form. 

Well, apparently these two sorta famous people heard about it because it turns out they stopped by (literally for about 2 minutes) to officially open the new building.

Wills and Kate. OMG!
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I took a stroll through the new building, which has a pleasant cafe and a pretty nice little gift shop. There is also a small museum which has been done beautifully, of course, and is free, of course. I love that about New Zealand.

The rest of the building is home to nursery rooms for cultivating native and rare plants. These rooms have automatic screens that raise and lower depending on the sun, so on a sunny day like this one, the whole building has a futuristic white look to it. On cloudy days (or on the non-sunny side of the building) it has a modern greenhouse look.

In other news I survived another round of night shifts (barely) and no, they haven't gotten an easier. Between shifts I managed to get out and enjoy the cooperative weather.