eden project

Get ready for a long one!!!

When visiting a location, google is your best friend, right? While we didn’t have much of an agenda starting out, one of those top 20 places you must see in England popped up in the browser. eden project was on the list and I just knew we had to go. It’s the world’s biggest conservatory with three different biomes. This place was once a china clay mine, and the founders had the foresight to think long-term goals. The Cornwall area is fairly poor and tourism is minimal considering its far away from big cities + there isn’t much to offer tourists. Once the eden project became a reality, it’s help tourism tremendously. Honestly, we wouldn’t have ever gone that far southwest.

I worry about the future of our planet, how the choices that have been made across the globe for many decades is finally catching up to us. This project just goes to show you that this world is bigger than just you+me. It takes something extremely ugly, an eyesore really, and creates beauty that you cannot necessarily find in one spot. I’d love to see more abandoned mines turned into similar parks.

Definitely check out the timeline of some behind-the-scenes. Anthony was worried that it would be preach-y and make you leave feeling like a terrible human being. There is only one spot, The Core, that Anthony felt uncomfortable. The Core is their educational center, so it makes sense that it would have items in there that could make you feel bad (i.e. a smart car filled with all sorts of everyday items with the price tag that it really costs to make with the resources). The Core is very interactive for children + it’s air conditioned with bathrooms! Otherwise, the park is amazing, full of beautiful life!

Several things to note about Eden (I couldn’t find the answers to some of these questions when I googled, so hopefully others will find these helpful!)

• if you take public transportation, you receive a discount on admission. just show your ticket from the bus when you buy your ticket. Also, make sure you know the bus time tables. 6:00 pm is the last bus from the eden project back to “civilization”.
• We stayed in St. Austell and ended up taking two different bus companies. Make sure to ask for a roundtrip ticket, it’s much cheaper that way. The First Bus 101 company is double the price of Western Greyhound 527. They both take the same amount of time to get into St. Austell, so I’d take Western Greyhound.
• Eden is very eco-conscious, providing as much local, sustainable food items on site. The prices are much higher than we wanted to spend though. The eden project is fine with you bringing in your own food and drinks. We were a tad worried about this and I couldn’t find anything on their website that said any different.
• The gift shop at the entrance sells some bakery items. Buy there if you are interested in a scone or bread. We luckily passed on the yummy looking scone in the restaurant and when I arrived into the gift shop and saw them there for 60p verse the £3, I rejoiced. It was an amazing scone.
• The workers at the ticket booth will try to entice you into purchasing the £6 guidebook. There is no need to spend that money. There are plenty of well-marked maps throughout the park.
• Visit the rainforest biome as early in the day as possible. It’s steamy and will only continue to get warmer throughout the day. There are several cooling rooms, but we weren’t able to take advantage of them with screaming children inside. No thank you!

I have a slight obsession with community gardens. I point them out when we are driving (or taking a train through the English countryside for that matter!). It tends to drive Anthony batty but I continue to do it. I have no shame people. As I mentioned earlier, there are 3 biomes, including an outdoor one. Part of that includes this community garden from all over the world!!!! The vegetables in the rows were so beautiful and made me long for coming back to the States to eat fresh veg once again!! The building below collects rain water (the park itself collects as much rain water as possible and recycles it for toilet water) + there’s another building for seed saving in this part. It was one of my favorite parts!
Holy lavender…it smelled amazing.

The mediterranean biome. While this was the smaller of the biomes, it was beautiful inside. Though a bit harder to capture with the camera! In the last photo is the largest rosemary plant I’ve ever seen!

The rainforest biome is the world’s largest indoor rainforest, including a waterfall, lots of ponds, indigenous homes/huts, fruit trees (hello bananas!!!!), beautiful flowers (the one below that looks semi-phalic looking is gum!), birds & other wildlife, and lots of heat/humidity. By the time you get towards the end, you seriously just want to blast through it to get outdoors and away from the heat. I mentioned above, that it’s best to visit this biome first thing!

My apologies for the long post!! I took so many images and really wanted to share them all! Plus I had to give my two cents about the experience too.