Tropical Dream Center

Tommy had last Monday off for the Christmas holiday and it stopped raining and the sun came out!  It was a beautiful 70 degrees so we headed up north to the EXPO Park area (about an hour and a half drive) to see the Tropical Dream Center.  I absolutely loved this place!  This is one of the best kept secrets on the island!!

Tropical Dream Center is hard to explain - there's a lot going on here! It's a botanical garden with tropical fruits and flowers and some very cool water features.  It starts out with this amazing gift shop and information center where the ceiling looks like this (above).  Then you wind and weave your way through huge areas of orchids and habiscus displays, and then an area with lots of different tropical fruit trees.  I wish I had taken more pictures!

Beautiful purple orchids

 

It has fish to feed and some very nice water features - large ponds, a river, and an aquarium with cool fish to look at.  There were also several exhibits indoors that looked very interesting (although in Japanese) including art and other "nature-y" things.  It also has a YUMMY little cafe with awesome taco rice to sit down and eat at outside overlooking the Sea.  

The layout is wonderful, winding and weaving in such a way through bridges and tunnels that you hardly notice you've just spent two hours at this great place!  The highlight is a cool castle (at the very top of the post) to climb up with an amazing view of the East China Sea!

Views from the top of the castle's observation deck.

Afterwards we walked toward the beach and discovered a two-story play structure on the beach and spent another whole hour there playing.  Wyatt and Olivia were in their glory and it was fun for us to relax, play, and let the kids blow off some energy!

Big girl on the slide!

Wyatt loved this maze!

A small roller slide from the top floor to the bottom. It has rolling metal bars to "assist" you in sliding down the slide faster.  These are famous in Okinawa - there are roller slides at parks where we live that are enormous! 

Livy maneuvering one of the flat cargo nets.  They also love cargo nets here in Oki. They have some near where we live that are shaped like Christmas trees (vertical) that are 50 feet high!

And last but not least, the "kids" bathroom.  I absolutely ADORE this!  It is in the middle of the beach and it's so incredibly cute (and clean!) It has 5 stalls with animals on them and the cutest, tiniest little squatty-potties you've ever seen! 

All in all, a wonderful, fun family day.  Oh how I wish we had more of these kind of days!! :)