Rotorua Part 5: Glass Blown Sculpture Garden

The last thing we did on our trip was to stop at Lava Glass Studio, which is between Rotorua and Taupo. I had found a deal on Grabone.com (a site that has discount deals for places around NZ) that gave us lunch at the Lava Glass café, a glass blowing demonstration, and entry into the glass blown sculpture garden, all for only $25. Aside from being a fantastic deal, J and I both love glass blowing, so we were really excited to go.

The glass blowing demonstration was amazing and interesting, as such things always are, and the inside of the store had loads of unbelievable examples of glass blowing talent. Since they were for sale, no pictures were allowed inside.

Fortunately, there was no such rule in the glass blown sculpture garden across the way, which was stunning. Here are some of the things we saw.

This rainbow is at the entrance to the garden.

Huge spheres which, although they seem rather simple, are apparently very difficult to make.

Teal mushrooms.

A waterfall of thin glass bowls (for lack of a better word).

One of many sets of lily pads in the little lake.

A bathtub full of glass balls, and more floating in the second tiny lake. Made me think of bubbles, and of how delighted my children would be to play with unbreakable versions of all these things.

Glass mosaic on glass walls.

This was my favourite of all - a whole forest inside a glass ball! Notice the little mushrooms in the middle, and the details of the foliage in the trees and the colours in the flowers. There were even more detailed ones inside for sale.

J smelling the glass flowers. The artists explained that they wanted to give you the impression that you were walking through the forest in the glass ball that I liked so much. I think they succeeded! There were loads more flowers, and even a second field of them in just pastel colours.

These flowers are much bigger, but I still don't quite blend in.

A very pleasant ending to our very pleasant trip.

I can't believe that it has taken me a month to get all of the pictures posted, but I wanted to post them little by little so as to do them proper justice. I have also not been too tempted to rush, since after spending time and money on this trip, we have done a lot of relaxing, which has been wonderful, but has not incited many blog-worthy moments. But not to worry, there are many things rattling around in my little brain that will be happy to be turned into posts before too long.