Let’s Reveiw! Balboa Park; Japanese Friendship Garden

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰

4/5 stars! Good place to visit!

Website: https://www.niwa.org/

Age range: all ages

Time: 1-2 hours

  

    The Japanese friendship garden is a beautiful 12-acre oasis in Balboa Park. We had the opportunity to visit during the cherry blossom festival. It was gorgeous and we had a great time, but lessons learned about the crowds this garden draws and how we may try to do it differently next time.  

Out of pure luck I decided to purchase VIP tickets, they were only a few dollars cheaper.  I knew I’d have the kids with me and wanted to cut down online time so I figured the special entrance would be worth it. Turns out it was most definitely worth it. When we arrived (20 minutes before opening) the parking lots were already packed, and we had to circle a bit to find parking.  As we left the parking lot, we ran into a large crowd standing on the sidewalk.  A very large crowd and as we continued to walk towards the garden, I realized this crowd was actually a line, a huge ginormous line.  It’s for the garden, specifically the cherry blossom festival.  Uh oh.  We persevere to the front of this line to find out if it was the line we needed to get behind or if this VIP entrance was someone where else.  The VIP entrance was not this line! Oh, thank goodness, we were sent off to a different gate. The night and day difference between gates. If you ever decide to attend an event, here get the VIP tickets worth every penny especially since they really were not that much more expensive then General admission.  

The VIP gate had no line. They took out tickets and we walked right into the garden from the upper entrance.  It took a bit of walking to get to the cherry blossoms, some downhill strolling. I’m glad I didn’t bring the stroller but there were some people there with them.  Walking into the main garden space brought back all the memories of living in Japan, like we had been transported to one of the many gardens we toured there.  Beautiful. By arriving at opening and getting right inside we had the cherry blossoms practically to ourselves.  I’m not sure when they opened the gates to general admission but for at least an hour it was us and a handful of people amongst the pink blooms. Able to just take it all in.  They had a few food stalls, and apparently some little cultural demonstrations were going to happen later in the afternoon, but we didn’t stay for that long.  

By noon the place was so jammed packed with people the kids started to get anxious. As we left the park that huge line was still pushing to get in, and it had expanded and spilled to start wrapping about the parking lot.  I’m not sure if everyone was able to enter the park that Sunday or not.  I gave them 4 stars because while we had a great time a friend wasn’t able to get in, she couldn’t wait in that line with her 2-year-old, it would have been too much.