World's Largest Indoor Rainforest

Tropical Islands Resort is a tropical theme park located in the former Brand-Briesen Airfield in Krausnick, in the Halbe municipality in the district of Dahme-Spreewald in Brandenburg, Germany, 50 kilometres from the southern boundary of Berlin and is housed within the largest free-standing dome in the world.

This massive airplane-hanger-like structure is 360 meters long, 210 meters wide, 107 meters high, and is supported by 14,000 tons of steel. It is large enough to host 8 entire soccer fields. Even the New York Statue of Liberty (93 meters) could stand upright in it, and the Paris Eiffel Tower (322 meters) could lie in it. The Dome offers enough space for the skyline of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz including the Sony Centre, the gatehouse and the Daimler Chrysler skyscraper.

At 5.5 million m³, it is one of the largest buildings on Earth by volume, and is the world's largest single hall without supporting pillars inside. The structure was commissioned as an airship hangar in November 2000, but the airship it was intended to house – the CL160 – was never built. The company went bankrupt in mid-2002. Two years later, Tropical Islands Resort was opened.

Inside the dome is the world’s largest indoor rainforest with 30,000 trees, bushes and groundcover. There are carnivorous plants, banana trees, coffee bushes, jungle creepers and other exotic plants. A kilometre-long path winds through the forest and a bridge over the mangrove swamp gives great views. The windows on one side of the dome are transparent, allowing real sunshine to come in and nourish over 500 species of plants.

Guests can lie on the 200 meter-long man-made beach, swim in the an artificial sea and enjoy warm 26 degrees Celsius weather all year round. The tropical sea is lined with sandy beaches and dotted with small tropical islands decorated with grass huts. Against the grey hangar wall is a backdrop of a blue sky with a few clouds.

Surrounding the pools are re-creations of famous architectural wonders from Asia like Angkor Wat, the Balinese Temple Gate, a longhouse from Borneo, and a traditional Thai house. Ponds and canals wind their way around various activity sites, and large Buddha statues are everywhere.

The complex is open year round, 24 hours a day, with a multitude of attractions to keep you busy. There is a swimming pool, large enough to accommodate up to 8,000 visitors a day, a 25 meter water slide, mini-golf course, restaurants serving gourmet meals, shopping pavilion, bars, daycares, and even overnight camping on Paradise beach.

Tropical paradise even has some environmentally-conscious features, such as recycled water from the swimming pools is used to waters the plant life found inside, which itself grows from custom-made soil made of sand, organic waste, clay, and tree bark. Natural UV light is also able to permeate through the dome and give plants access to sunlight and warmth.

And because of the humidity found within, water condensation periodically gathers inside the dome, which then falls back down producing spontaneous rain showers, further adding to the resorts tropical climate. The resort is located in the municipality of Krausnick, in Brandenburg, Germany, about 60 km south-southeast of Berlin and an hour’s drive away.

Rare and Stunning Flowers

Is there anything more lovely in nature than the explosion of grace and color that is the flower? It is small wonder that humans have been using flowers to convey emotions and as decoration for thousands of years. Studies have even shown that looking at flowers, and being surrounded by them, has a positive effect on our overall well-being. So take a few moments, breath in, breath out, and enjoy the simple beauty of these gorgeous gifts of nature.

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul. Luther Burbank

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. Henry Ward Beecher

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. Claude Monet

Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. If you like me, send them while I'm alive. Brian Clough

You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. Walter Hagen

Source: Frederick T.

The Ten Most Beautiful Gardens of the World

1. Versailles, France The famous French landscape designer André Le Nôtre laid out these gardens southwest of Paris in the 17th century at the behest of Louis XIV. The Sun King wanted them to magnify the glory of his palace at Versailles, which was itself a monument to his absolute rule. The 250 acres (101 hectares) are riddled with paths that lead to flower beds, quiet corners decorated with classical statuary, ornamental lakes, and a canal that King Louis used for gondola rides. 2. Singapore Botanic Garden, Singapore Considered one of the world's prettiest botanical gardens, the Singapore Botanic Garden was established in 1859. Its 128 acres (52 hectares) are divided into three "cores." Bukit Timah Core is geared for educational and recreational use. In Tanglin Core, visitors can find a bandstand and many statues sprinkled among favorite native plants and trees. The most popular core for tourists is Centre. The National Orchid Garden is in this section, atop the park's highest point, where more than 60,000 colorful orchids bloom. 3.Descanso Gardens, La Canada Flintridge, California A mere 20-minute drive outside of Los Angeles you'll find a bucolic paradise with more than 100,000 plants and one of the world's largest collections of camellias. The gardens and woods of Descanso ("rest" or "repose" in Spanish) unfold over 160 acres (65 hectares) of the San Rafael Hills. Don't miss the Japanese garden and the International Rosarium that is home to thousands of roses. Children particularly enjoy riding the Descanso Gardens Enchanted Railroad, a mini-diesel train. 4. Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island, British Columbia The Butchart Gardens are a dazzling example of a successful reclamation project. The land, used for years by Portland Cement, by 1904 had exhausted its value as a quarry. That's when Jennie Butcher, the wife of Portland Cement's owner, filled the space with soil from nearby farms. Her vision expanded into a 55-acre (22-hectare) tract filled with 700 varieties of plants that bloom from March to October. 5. Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Italy A Renaissance cardinal decided to make life in Tivoli bearable by turning a dilapidated Benedictine monastery into a lovely villa, the Villa d'Este. This was embellished by one of the most fascinating garden and fountain complexes in the world, recently listed by UNESCO as one of Italy's 31 major historical/artistic sites. Among the most bewitching of the mossy fountains are the Fontana del Bicchierone (water pours out from a large shell-shaped basin); the Rometta fountain, which is a miniature Rom complete with a wolf-suckling Romulus and Remus; and the Avenue of the Hundred Fountains, where animal heads, lilies, a small boat, basins, and so on all spurt water. 6. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. You might feel as though you've stepped into a Merchant-Ivory set in any of the gardens that make up this estate at the north end of Georgetown, one of Washington's poshest neighborhoods. Vines tumble down stone walls enclosing the Fountain Terrace. Lovers' Lane meanders past a Roman-style amphitheater built around a small deep-blue pool. And what used to be a simple cow path leading away from the pool is now called Melisande's Allée, perhaps as a nod to the haunting opera Pelleas et Melisande. 7. Gardens of the Villa Éphrussi de Rothschild, St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France In the early 1900s, Béatrice Éphrussi, a Rothschild baroness, built a pink-confection, Venice-style villa surrounded by breathtaking gardens, with the sparkling sea beyond. Pathways meander through the seven themed gardens, the focal point being the French gardens, with a lily-pad-dotted pool, dancing fountains, and a Temple of Love replicating the Trianon at Versailles. There are also a Provençal garden, filled with olive trees and lavender; a lapidary garden, with sculptures too large to be displayed in the villa; and Spanish, Japanese, Florentine, and exotic gardens. 8. Stourhead, Warminster, England To the English gentry of the 18th century, the more classical something could be, the better. Stourhead is a grand example of genteel fascination with the past. Henry Hoare II punctuated the gardens of his Wilshire estate with re-created ruins and classical buildings such as the Pantheon and Temple of Apollo.    9. The Master-of-Nets Garden, Suzhou, China This residential garden in southeast China, called Wangshiyuan in Chinese, was designed during the Song dynasty (A.D. 960-1270). The arrangement of pavilions, halls, music rooms, winsome bamboo groves, and waterside perches is an exercise in natural harmony. The central section is a small world within itself; piles of yellow stones form "mountains" complete with caverns, and a tiny arched bridge called the "leading to quietude" crosses a pond to a small pavilion in the center. 10. Sans Souci, Potsdam, Germany Frederick the Great of Prussia built the splendid rococo palace as his summer place, where he could live without a care, sans souci. Busts of Roman emperors, decorative statues, and a Chinese teahouse dot the lavish grounds.