Exploring Our City: Japanese Friendship Garden

{ little explorer }

Hi! I wanted to introduce you to my new little project, Exploring Our City. My goal is to explore little areas in our city and take pictures and blog about the experience, at least once a month. With this, I hope to share beautiful spaces that you can explore with your family as well.

In the month of march we visited the beautiful Japanese Friendship Garden located in Balboa Park. We always walked past it when in Balboa and were curious to go inside but weren't sure what to expect. We were blown away by all the beauty inside the garden, from the blooming cherry blossom trees to the koi fish pond and all the bridges and plants in between. They also have the tea pavilion restaurant which we wanted to try (but it was too crowded), maybe next time. We loved it so much that I can't wait to get our family membership to come back as many times as we want!

While this is a beautiful place to take your children and teach them about nature, they have very strict rules. You must stay on paths at all times, no food, no running and no shouting are a few of them, so it may be a little exhausting for those of you with very active toddlers like mine. I had to keep reminding Maximiliano that he needed to stay on the path, to not try to pet the koi fish and so on so forth, but nothing too crazy.

The garden admission tickets are only $8 per person and children under 6 are free. Monday - Friday they open from 10 am - 5 pm and Saturday and Sunday they are open from 10 am - 4:30 pm. They have different membership packages which include a generational, student, individual and family membership, all for great prices.