I can't recall the first time I ate a jelly bean although I can tell you, with great confidence, that I liked it. What's not to like right?; All that sugar, artificial flavour and food colouring wrapped up in a convenient package. Surely a food from the gods! Jelly beans are a legit treat and I've eaten many.
These days they come in many flavours, some of which are questionable...There's a dirty dishwater jelly bean available here, along with a stink bug flavour as well. I'm usually up for anything, but it's doubtful I'll give them a go. Here's where you can get them: Jelly Belly There's some more appealing options of course - The humble jelly bean has come a long way over the years right?
Anyway, for some, it doesn't matter what those beans have been; It's all about what those beans can be now.
On a recent trip to New Zealand we headed up the gondola to Skyline high above Queenstown and came across a collection of jelly beans that have been beans but now are artwork. You can see one of the pieces above.
Lord of the Rings fans will recognise Frodo Baggins looking at the One Ring in his hand. Yes, it's made out of jelly beans - 20,000 of them to be exact. Pretty cool huh?Obviously the inspiration came from LOTR which was filmed all over New Zealand and in Queenstown itself.
There are three jelly bean artworks displayed in the visitor centre of Skyline however this was my favourite. It took the creator 100 hours to create and when viewed from a few paces back is a pretty good image of Frodo. Unfortunately there was an open glass window behind me when I took the shot which you can see reflected in the art-work however you sort of get the idea I suppose.
Here's one of the other art-works that has been beans but is now more than just beans. This one has 25,000 jelly beans in it and is quite a bit larger than the Frodo piece. If you look in the lower right of the bean art you'll see Australia and to the right of that is New Zealand. I'm pretty sure if the world was made of jelly beans in real life it wouldn't last long, and neither would this art-work if it wasn't covered in glass!
We had an amazing time at Skyline that day - There's simply stunning views, thrills on spills on the luge track and later we had a really nice meal in the restaurant as the sun set over Lake Wakatipu and the snow-capped mountains.
It was our wedding anniversary and Faith's birthday that day so we'd planned it out to have dinner there which was really nice. No, jelly beans were not on the menu, but just about everything else you could possibly imagine was! Here's a picture I took and an example of what the views are like.
We went for the views and for dinner however it was cool to see this art-work all made of jelly beans. I'm not really sure of the context and why it's there to be honest but it's a cool little feature and I thought worthy of a photo or two and a little post.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
