Niagara-on-the-Lake is the home of the Shaw Festival. The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw’s works, are performed here in four theatres. The Festival has added some other contemporary productions over the years. Shaw won the Nobel prize for literature in 1925 and was also the winner of an Oscar. Many people come from near and far to visit this lovely lakeside town and also take in one of the shows. I was there for the Peach Festival. All these images of the Shaw Cafe and Wine Bar were taken two weeks ago.
As you can see in this collage, the building is impressive, and even more so, the hanging gardens, as I call them. The flowers are just beautiful and I couldn’t stop admiring and photographing them. It looks like a lovely place to dine or have a drink. There is even a statue of George Bernard Shaw with a fountain around it. Many people were sitting out on the patio enjoying their food and drink.
This Cafe and Wine Bar made me think of the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” and I wondered if it might have been a little bit like this. Those Gardens were known to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
| Legend says … The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built by King Nebuchadnezzar so that the queen, his wife, would have a lovely, private, terraced garden to enjoy. The gardens were rumored to be about 400 feet wide, 400 feet long, and over 80 feet high. Some historians believe the gardens were built in a series of platforms that all together were 320 feet high. There were paths and steps and fountains and gorgeous flowers, all build to make a homesick queen feel welcomed and loved. It was supposedly built around 600 BCE, along the bank of the Euphrates River (south of the modern day city of Baghdad, Iraq.) No one knows if the gardens actually existed, or if they did, if they existed in Babylon, but the legend is a lovely one. While this Cafe is nothing like the size of the one in this legend, I love the way the flowers are hanging and I’m stunned by all the beauty I see here. This is my own “Hanging Garden” right here at Niagara-on-the-Lake. I hope you enjoy this collage as much as I do. Here is a George Bernard Shaw quote for you too: “The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.”
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