The Ringling Experience...Part 2 (Outside)

We spent a couple of hours touring the circus museums, then headed toward Mabel Ringling's rose garden.  Mabel was enchanted by everything Italian and that love is reflected in her rose garden.  Unfortunately, every February and October, all of the flowers are trimmed off in order to strengthen the plants themselves.  Hence...no roses in the rose garden ;o(

There is a lot of statuary and pillars, tho.  I can imagine it's quite lovely when all the plants are in bloom.  

There are several huge banyan trees on the property, which I believe covers 66 acres.

We followed the path to The Secret Garden, as well as the Ringing Burial Site.  To be honest, the Secret Garden was not very secret, at least not any more.  John Ringling died in 1936, his wife died in 1929 but they were moved and interred here in 1991.

His sister is buried here also.  There is an interesting article here about how they ended up in this particular spot.

We didn't buy tickets to tour the inside of their 56 room mansion, called Ca' D'Zan (House of John in Venetian) but we will next time we visit.  The outside is spectacular.  I know there are a gazillion beautiful places in the world that I will never see, so this is probably the most breathtaking one I will see.

The outside "deck" is marble and reminds me of a quilt.  I tried to find information about it online but didn't have any luck.  

Longboat Key is in the background

This small walkway surrounds the "deck".

The back of the house overlooking Sarasota Bay

Looking back from the Bolger Campiello and Promenade

FYI...this was their winter home.  We followed the Promenade along the water toward the Millennium Tree Trail.  This sculpture is located along the walk but I couldn't find any plaque describing it.

We continued along, passing the Ellis Japanese Tea House, which overlooks one of the ponds on the property.

We loved this temporary display of bronze heads, designed by a Chinese artist...                 Ai Weiwei.

"Circle of Animals/ Zodiac Heads"

As much as I love the dog, I think the dragon is my favorite.  It was hard taking pictures of them because the sun was so bright.

There is a huge art museum on the property but we didn't get into it, either.  Maybe next time.

Love the roof on this section of the museum (Center for Asian Art) and if you look closely, you can see windows in the upper third of the roof.

One of the statues surrounding the art museum.

We walked back to the Circus Museum to purchase a Christmas ornament and noticed these two trees in bloom.  Not sure what the first one is called but the second one is a Pink  Trumpet Tree.

There is no way we could have seen the huge art museum, as well as tour the house, in the four hours we spent here today.  Next time we visit, we will skip the two circus museums and concentrate on the areas we didn't see.  

You can learn some fun facts about the "Mansion the Circus Built" here.

Thanks for stopping by...
;o)