Picnics & Peacocks in Kyoto Gardens, Holland Park

What better way to celebrate the beginning of spring than to get out there and enjoy the great outdoors, hm? Last weekend my nephews, my brother and I found ourselves at the beautiful Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, ready for a day of fun in the sun.

Kyoto Garden is a small Japanese garden inside of Holland Park - a tiny taste of Japan if you will. It was gifted to Great Britain by Japan to commemorate their long lasting friendship. The garden is filled with beautiful flower-blooming trees, plants, natural waters such as ponds and waterfalls and small animals. I have always wanted to visit Kyoto Garden, I'm not quite sure why as it literally is just a garden in the middle of a huge park but it's a beautiful one none-the-less. And as my nephews had never seen a peacock before, we decided to make it our mission to find one before the day was over as the garden is also known for its beautiful peacocks..

Since some little tummies were pretty hungry by the time we got there, we decided to stop in the picnic area where you can either sit on the grass and eat your lunch or sit at the picnic benches like we did. Aftter lunch, we decided to follow the path and signs to Kyoto Garden and despite the huge amounts of gawking tourists and the few pets here and there, it had a beautiful, peaceful zen-like aura to it. The park consists of a cute rocky waterfall which runs into a large pond full of fish, a small bridge over the water which takes you from one side of the garden to the other, loads of pretty rosebushes and small tuilip field, another pond where the ducks swim and some other plants and trees scattered around the garden. Luckily, I remembered to bring my underwater camera and managed to catch a glimpse of a few of the fish that swam beneath us whilst we were on the bridge - you can catch them in my YouTube video.

Every now and then whilst we walked around the garden, we heard the faint shrieks of the peacocks in the distance but could not for the life of us find where they were! We followed the sounds to a very long row of rose bushes but no peacocks there. We followed another shrieking sound which lead us to a cute garden full of tuilips, statues and other pretty budding spring flowers, but again, no peacocks there. Then we heard more shrieks which we followed and found ourselves in the middle of a large field, filled with sunbathing youngsters, families picnicking and playing music and kids playing football or catch. Clearly, this was God's way of telling us that it was time to stop hunting P̶o̶k̶é̶m̶o̶n peacocks and to take a break. So we set up our little picnic blankets, kicked our shoes off and just chilled in the warm sun. I'm not sure which part of Holland Park we were in but it definitely wasn't Kyoto Garden anymore. There we stayed for about an hour or so taking pictures, playing games, nibbling crisps, playing music and relaxing until we came to the decision to quit looking for thr peacocks and to call it a day. So we packed up our stuff started heading back through the park.

I'm gonna assume that what happened next was fate because as we walked back past the rosebushes we heard that oh-so-familiar shrieking noise. Low and behold, as the noise got louder and we got closer to the exit, there is was... A beautifully proud shiny peacock, strutting his stuff around the park! My nephews started getting excited and we all got our cameras and bread crumbs out. I'd love to say that I managed to get a really good shot of Mr Peacock spreading his pretty feathers for us but in actual fact, he simply was not having it. He didn't seem too fussed about the fact that he had attracted quite an audience simply by gracing us with his presents. People tried playing peacock sounds on their phones and showing him photos and videos of other peacocks shrieking but he simply walked in the opposite direction. It wasn't long before we all started to get bored and the crown started to disappear. We stayed for an extra few minutes but eventually, we gave in and left him to it. So unfortunately, no fancy peacock photos for you guys, just regular old 'walking-around' and 'eating-bread' shots captured. Sorry!

We rounded with the only suitable end-of-a-hot-day purchase... ice cream! Of course, we couldn't walk past Gelato Mio and not pop inside for a quick strawberry ice cream with sprinkles (feel free to check out my Trip Advisor reviews)!

All in all, a really nice, chilled, sunny Spring afternoon with the littlens. I would suggest maybe bringing some speakers to play music in Holland Park if you are plannig on whipping out the picnic food and blankets like we did. Also, probably best to visit Kyoto Garden earlier in the morning when less people will be around if you prefer the peace and quiet uninterrupted!