Monday was Memorial Day, and so I had the day off. Mer had agreed to let me be in charge, so we headed back up to Cleveland, to the east side, to the University Circle area. Even though it was a really warm day, I wanted to show Mer the Cleveland Cultural Gardens that I had seen the week before while walking that section of the Cleveland Marathon.

We parked near the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is normally closed on Mondays, but was open for the holiday. We decided to use the restrooms, and as we entered the museum, we ran into a CVCA family. So we chatted with them for a short while before we headed off toward the gardens.

Or so I thought. We walked for the better part of a mile, and we saw the Chinese cultural garden, but no others. We finally found a map and figured out I had led us in the wrong direction. We turned around and walked back to the museum, and I thought about leaving since it was getting so hot. I decided to press on, and I’m glad we did.

The Clevleland Cultural Gardens are a series of gardens in a long, narrow park that borders either side of a winding north-south road. The gardens were installed and are maintained by various ethnic groups in Cleveland to highlight the home countries. The gardens go on for over a mile, on both sides of the road, and even up a hill above the road for some of the way.

There are many countries we saw, but we were probably most impressed by the Irish garden, which was the very first one we saw. It was well kept and spacious, and there were busts of famous Irish people and a Celtic cross made of stone and grass that was over fifty feet long, occupying most of the garden. We also liked the Hungarian garden very much, which was on two levels and had busts of famous Hungarians and quotations from them.

Most of the gardens were interesting, and we saw them all. A few were lame, sadly led by the English garden, which was not laid out as a formal English garden, and was designated as English solely by the Union Jack and one bust of Shakespeare.

We had an interesting chat with a man who lived in the area, and we found out that the gardens are sometimes vandalized, and some of the busts are stolen. That made me sad; it is such a great little park that it seems as if even the vandals should respect it. Some of the parks date back to the late 1930s, and should be left intact.

I may suggest we go back sometime in the fall, to see the colors change and so we could be less hot. We managed okay for most of the walk, but I have to admit that the last mile or so back to the car was a bit of a slog.