City of BALAMB GARDEN

[Cloud Strife 0]

Hi everybody!

Long time I'm not postng anything, I've had so few spare time lately I couldn't play SimCity 4 as much as I wanted!
Just think that it took more than 7 months to complete this city because I had very few time to play.

Just before I start this CJ, I would like to remind you of my old CJ's:
- City Of SPIRA - My very fist CJ here! Final Fantasy X Theme
I'm planning to update it soon, because I want to update that city with the many plugins and techniques I've got lately!

- City of MIDGAR - My second CJ! Final Fantasy VII Theme
A city I really liked, small but nice and with no unemployment nor major problems!


Here I'm going to make you tour my last work, CITY OF BALAMB GARDEN, built of course on the Final Fantasy VIII Theme!!!

As for Midgar, this city is controlled by Shin.Ra Corporation, that has his second headquarter here, and gave the control of the city to Major Squall.

The ShinRa palace is on the ShinRa Hill. As seen for Midgar, also in Balamb they choose an elevated place to build their headquarter, maybe to have a better view and control of the city and to make more difficult to reach their domain for attackers or enemies of any kind.






Before beginning the detailed tour of the city, I want to show you some of the most important places to see in my city. They're just a few of the many things to see. So I placed some numbers on the map shown here, to give you a better glimpse of where the following places are located on the city.

Balamb Garden once was a militar city. The SeeDs were trained here, and as a consequence it is build on a higher level, as if it was on a small large hill. It's artificial however! The city is built on a higher floor, bypassed and fenced by walls.
There are few roads that enter the city passing through the wall.
Once the city was yet smaller, with many space for training, and enough small-suburbs where the SeeDs, their families, and people working for ShinRa lived.
The access to the city was not allowed to anyone else.
This is why the city is bypassed by a ring of walls and is placed on an artificial hill.

Next post I'll show you how particular the road-network is in this city! You'll see underground freeways and particular ways to access and leave the city. You'll also learn that ShinRa is going to build pay-tolls for people exiting and accessing the city!
We'll see even the public transport network in next post.



1 - THE BALAMB GARDEN
The place that gives name to the city!




This is the biggest garden villa of the simnation! And this is the place that gives the name to the city!
Just an aerial view of the enormous garden of balamb! I'm not going to give you details yet, because the Garden contains so much stuff to see that would require too much space and words. Better look at it in one of the next postings!



2 - The ShinRa Hill Tower
Headquarters of Shin.Ra Corporation




Here's where the ShinRa Tower is! In Midgar it is built in a central position. However keep in mind that ShinRa (that is the big corporation that owns the entire nation) built Midgar from scratch and could plan from the origins of the city where to place its headquarter.
Balamb was a later adding to the ShinRa domain. And at the beginning it was a militar city closed to anyone except for SeeDs and ShinRa workers, so the company had its headquarter in the Garden in the heart of the city.
So many years have passed, no more wars, ShinRa became also a commercial company. The city has opened to everyone and the original garden (the militar building where SeeDs were trained) was destroyed. So ShinRa had to move their headquarter to another zone. First of all because they don't like to be among "common people". And because they want an exclusive location for their affairs, and security measures just in case of war or attacks of any kind.



Another look at the ShinRa Hill. As you can see, their area is entirely closed by walls.
Access to this area is strictly restricted.



This statue represents the Guardian Force Quetzal. It has been built on Major Squall's request.





3 - The QUETZAL AIRPORT
Big international airport of the city



The pic is self-explainatory. This is the big airport in Balamb Garden. It is built on the eastern side of the area, out of the city walls.
A militar airbase is build just next the airport.
Once here there were only war planes.
As soon as the city became more populated, opened and more quiet, ShinRa transformed half of the old big militar airport in a civil airport.

 

Front of the airport entrance there's a big bus terminal that grants a public transport connection between the airport and the city and the nearest suburbs.



In the above pic you can see the other half of the airport too! It's still used as militar airbase.


4 - BALAMB CENTRAL STATION




This is the big Balamb Central Station, built in the very heart of the city, it provides connection to all the public transportations: bus, subway, tramway, taxi, railway.
Even in Balamb (as seen in the other cities), the railway system is managed by F.S. Incorportated, a ShinRa Company that manages the entire simnation railway network. They built also this great big station, that we will see later with higher details expecially when we'll look at the Balamb public transport network.





5 - A.R.C.O. Inc. Gated Community
Advanced Researchs and Commercial Offices Incorporated
A ShinRa Corp. Company



A.R.C.O. is a ShinRa company that owns and builds commercial and industrial districts. They provide so much workplaces to the city, and so much money to ShinRa.
Here in Balamb they've got a very big gated community, full of offices, research centers and industrial labs. You can see on the map how big their gated area is (since it's an aerial shot, I drew a red line to give you a better idea).
We'll see it better later. Access to the area is restricted to people that work in one of the buildings placed inside. However not all the employees are allowed to enter. There are also some parkings for their cars inside.



A closeup pic of the area. The entrance is along M. Barambani Street, in the Carbuncle District. There's also a subway station in front of it. The McDonalds you can see is "out" of the Arco borderline. It's in a good position so many Arco employeers can have lunch there, as long as many other people that work around there.

This entire area is full of hi-tech industries and offices.



6 - THE CENTRA RUINS



This is an historical area. Here there are the old centra ruins. Many of there historical buildings and monuments got destroyed in the last war many many years ago.
Bottom of the area there have are many clubs and pubs. It's not so nice to see the clubs in front of the ruins, but that is a great place for them because they can be open all night long without bothering sleeping people (nobody lives in the ruins!).



This is the old Centra Castle. This is the only building that has not been destroyed in the war.




The nightlife area! The better place for all night long opened clubs, between the ruins and the freight area!


7 - THE HEROES' SQUARE



Out of the city walls, in the southern area, there's this beautiful square, with a monument to the heroes. You can also see the terminal of the Elevated Metrorail service that serves this area.
Unfortunately the trains don't enter directly the city, so people arriving here have to leave the station and cross the road just to access an F.S. Railway Station to jump on a train that will bring them inside the walls.



Left of the Heroes Square there's the Lunagate Area. The main thing to see here is the artificial lake. You can also see the elevated rails that connect this area to the Heroes Square.


8 - LENAN CASTLE AND ST. KATHERINE CHURCH



Still out of the walls, in the south-western area, there's the huge giant medieval castle of Lenan.
This area is nice, full of small houses, parks, trees, and has got an high historical value.
It's connected to the Grandidieri industrial area and then to the city.



Going west, you can tour also the St. Katherine Church.
Even if far from the city, this area is often toured by many many people because of its storical value.



9 - MATSUMOTO CASTLE and THE SALT LAKE



This is the Matsumoto area, where you can see this ancient oriental-style castle. This is mainly a fishing area.
The castle is on top of the Salt Lake.
The area looks quiet and nice.
There's also a small bus terminal in front of the castle, that is served by just two local bus lines. It's called "Old Station" (stazione vecchia).



Above here's a view of the Salt Lake, bottom of the Matsumoto Castle.




A - NEW ESTHAR, STUDIOS, LUNATIC PARK



This area is bigger than we expect. Maybe I should have placed more letters because the places in the pics I'm going to show are not so close.

However this is the Horizons area. Here there are two commecial big malls where people are free to shop, and some offices. There are also the TV studios, and the local radio station.
It's an area where you can easily see and meet VIP, actors, politicians, and so on!




Top-West there's the "New Esthar" area. This is so called because it is built along Esthar Street that entirely cross the city. The northern area is known as Esthar district, so this recently built zone has been called "New Esthar" district.



You know Luna Parks? You like'em? Ok ,this is the LUNATIC PARK!!! Its full name is "Lunatic Pandora Park" because it's along the Lunatic Pandora Avenue, however people call it "Lunatic Park" from so many years.
Fairs, concerts and many other activities are organized in this area.


B - ULTIMECIA CASTLE



This scary and big castle is the Ultimecia's Castle, where the sorceress Ultimecia used to live in.



C - WINHILL AREA and ST.NICHOLAS



This is the Winhill Medieval Village, a small area out of the city walls in the northern corner of the map.
This zone is protected by ancient walls. In the Middle Ages this was closed and access-restricted.
Now it looks like a nice place to live in, and is often toured by people interested in the history of Balamb.



On the left there's the Winhill Waterfall.
The roads here are very small and rural.
Houses are small too.



Inside the Winhill walls there's the St. Felice church and its cloisters, along with a small cemetery.
It has got high historical value, and archeologists are still working in order to discover more stuff from the past.



Going west there's a large rural area and a road overpass that goes over the freeway (unfortunately there are no ramps). It reaches the St. Nicolas area, where there's its Church and a connection with the FS Railway.



D - THE STADIUM



East of Ultimecia Castle there's the Stadium! This is a very rich area, crossed by a tramway.
There are two stadiums. One of them is also used for concerts.
There are also training fields.


E - MOUNT THAR



This is MOUNT THAR, top of north-western corner of the map.
Nice and quiet area, its only problem is it has bad connections with the city: only one road that gets full of cars at rush hours, and the bus system isn't able to heal this situation.



Welcome to Mount Thar!



The Church of Thar and a small cemetery.



F - SCALAMANGA AREA



Eastern corner of the map and out of the city walls there's the Scalamanga Area, where you can see the Scalamanga Castle, a lake, and some nice houses. There's also railway connection.
Above this area there are some agricultural fields and the Obel lake.



G - THE LAKE OF OBEL



North of Scalamanga, down the Shinra Hill and East of Winhill there's the Obel Lake, with a fisherman village. Here people come to fishing on Sunday but also on other days of the week.
Some rich people have also small boats here.





That's all for now, more updates soon in the afternoon!!
Hope you like the beginning of my CJ!

[SCkid 0]

Wow. looks amazing! hope to see more!

[KingTitan 6]

What a great CJ.....Love it..looks great...i especially LOVE that Spiral SkyScraper.....where on the STEX is it, or do u have a link for it?

[tudorjason 31]

Beautiful city. It looks like a lot of thought went into it. Good job!

[Dsrwhat316 12]

a great start! i'm into final fantasy games myself; i even named my CJ after FFX's Bevelle. i like your use of the seasonal trees; that really caught my eye. nice work!!

[Insane Child of Bodom 1]

To be honest I'm impressed with just the amount of content you have and its quite a start to this CJ!

Great work and I can't wait for the next update!

[sc4portugal 10]

Wow this is amazing! Great work, I love the layout Mount Thar is very impresseve and wow the castles and the ruins are great.

[penguin007 27]

great start your areas look great

Will

[Cloud Strife 0]

Thanks for your comments guys! I'm so glad you liked the beginning of my CJ!

Just before I go on looking at the road and public transport networks, I've just a few customized replies for....

Dsrwhat316 - what's your CJ? If you give me/us the link I'll be happy to take a look at it! You can post it here if you want!!

KingTitan - if you search the STEX with the keyword "skycraper" you'll find it ready for being downloaded!! With many many other wonderful skycrapers! However it's the BlaM Tornado Tower. Thanks to its author for his great work!!!

THE ROAD NETWORK OF BALAMB GARDEN

Due to the forum rules, I had to adapt the preview picture above to a maximum width of 800 pixels. JUST CLICK ON IT IN ORDER TO SEE IT FULL SIZE, that way you will be able to read the text better.

The map shows the main road network of the city. 

Green lines represent the freeway/highway network, while the blue ones represent the motorway/super road network.

As said before, the entire city is built on an artificial hill and is rounded by walls. It's not possible to access the city by foot. Only some main roads enter the walls and give access to the city from the suburbian area.

Here is a shot to give you an idea. Here we see the Sirena Avenue that enters the city from the neighborhood (we're on the east of The Heroes Station we saw in the post before).

Just left the HEROES STATION a freeway enters the city. As you can see also freeway follow the same rules of motorways when entering the city.

Following the freeway, eventually you will see a light. The cloveleafs are built out of the tunnels, at a lower level. They allow cars to access the city. Then the freeway enters another tunnel and runs underground until the next cloveleaf or until it leaves the city on the other side.

Showing some more of the city walls.

The roadway you see nearby the fences of the walls is the "BYPASS" (Circonvallazione): it's a set of connected roads that tour around the city, strictly along its perimeter, nearby the fences of the walls. As you see on the map, it's interrupted on the western area.

Once it was a two ways road. As long as the city became bigger, many people found it very useful and began transiting along it, requiring some upgrades. However, it's not a road that was thought and built to be capable of handling too much cars, since the city in its origin was small and access restricted. So the upgrades that have been done have not fully solved the traffic problems of this important roadway. There are also physical and natural limits to overcome.

There is a project to transform this entire roadway in a circular freeway, building also the missing line on the western area of the city. That would be called "The GREAT BIG RING" (GBR). However ShinRa is still working on the project.

Here you can see what I mean when I talked about the upgrades to the Bypass.

As you can see, in this area it was not possible to build a straight avenue, so they made the original road one-way (with enough space for 2 cars), and built another roadway that goes under the previous one and connects to it as soon as the terrain allows it to be possible.

This is the Carbuncle Area, as we saw full of offices and workplaces. Here the bypass became a single two way road, and has a crossing with traffic. lamps with the Selphie Avenue (that connects to the Scalamanga area in the eastern side of the suburb).

Traffic jams at every hour!

Another curious thing: the bypass changes its name according to the districts it runs through. For instance, here it's called "Carbuncle Bypass" (Circonvallazione Carbuncle) while in the previous pic it is called Galbadia Bypass (Circonvallazione Galbadia).

[Cloud Strife 0]

This is the SECOND PART of the second update post.

I divided this update in two posts due to its size.

So you can see the ROAD NETWORK DESCRIPTION in the post just above this (I say it just because maybe , looking fast and forward to the last post, you may miss the previous one!).

THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT NETWORK

As seen before, due to the forum rules, I had to place the preview pic with a width of 800 pixels. JUST CLICK ON IT TO SEE FULL SIZE and be able to read the text!!!

This is the public transport network.

It's managed by ShinRa Corp too.

Balamb Garden has two subway lines:

- LINE 1 connecting the Trabia Station to Carbuncle, and crossing the heart of the city

- LINE 2 connecting the Deling Station to Galbadia, and crossing the Central Station too.

Both lines cross at the Central Station, where commuters are able to choose other transport systems, such as the other subway line, trams, railways (managed by F.S. nc), bus, taxi.

There are also 4 tram lines:

1 - Red line connects the Laguna Station to the Knights Station (Cavalieri)

2 - Cyan line goes from the Knights Station to Esthar

3 - Yellow line starts from Deling and reaches the Central Station

4 - Green line begins in Galbadia and arrives to the Central Station

The entire city is served by bus too.

Night service is only done by bus.

Some more shots of the BALAMB GARDEN CENTRAL STATION, one of the biggest yet beautiful stations of the SimNation, built and maintained by F.S. Incorporated.

The tram node out of the Central Station.

The subway exit out of the Central Station.

On the back of the station there's a big bus depot, with tools also for bus repairing.

A look at the Deling Node Station.

Here's where Red Trams enter the great Balamb Garden. Nice to tour it by tram too!

Inside the Garden of Balamb there's also a subway station of the Metro 1 line.

[Voulpiotis 4]

Looks great, semi-futuristic city!!! Can't wait to see more!!

[Dsrwhat316 12]

click the picture in my signature and you're there!

just so you know; it bears no resemblance to Bevelle in FFX.

[Zelgadis 638]

Wow, great to see you back!

Seems you have discovered lots of new parks since your last CJ. And you use them very, very well. And the mountain is perfect.

ISF

[Schulmanator 5,799]

An impressive start to a new CJ. Great job.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

This is so extensive! I can believe that it took 7 months to make this city. It's incredible.

[suplado! 23]

cool parks and a really colorful pics...nice downtown and the transport layout is perfect...

[Cloud Strife 0]

Back to the CJ, thanks once again for all the comments and visits to this thread!

Zelgadis, my friend, I'm happy to see you on my third CJ!!

It's now time for...

Touring the Garden

 Meet Mayor Squall

For this CJ, I'm going to use a different narrative approach.

This time we're going to meet the Mayor of the city, Squall Leonheart, son of Shin.Ra president Rufus we met in the Midgar CJ (if you want to tour that CJ too, just go to my first post and you'll find a link!).

"Welcome to Balamb", says Squall as soon as we meet him in the Shin.Ra Tower. We were allowed to enter its walls thanks to his invite.

From here, we can have a better look of what is there around the tower.

A view of the city from the Shin.Ra Tower. As you can see, at the bottom of the hill there are some power plants and water plants. At the bottom of the tower we can see a sort of research center and, if you look at the walls, there's an exit on the back of the tower.

Here's the secret research lab.

On the left of the tower, there's a small altair for religious purposes maybe.

This is the road on the back of the tower. It can be accessed only from the Shin.Ra top hill. That would bring you to the Area 5.1 and the Missile Base.

Here we are: very secret Shin.Ra base for experiments and maybe other things we can't just imagine.

At the bottom of the Shin.Ra hill there's the so called AREA 76: it's a gated area directly controlled by Shin.Ra that provides the entire city of electricity and water.

It offers even some jobs.

Another look at this area.

"Let's have a quick tour of Balamb, guys.", says now Squall. "The city has about 15.000 citizens, however it's going to grow even more. Once ago it was a restricted community of about 200 people, all employeers of Shin.Ra Corporation. We still can't believe how much we're grown in such few years, and even more people are willing to move to here. We're still close and nearby MIDGAR, that is the capital city of the SimNation. This is another reason that makes people desire to live in here. It's less expensive than Midgar to buy an house here, expecially in suburbs such Winhill.

Now, I want that the first thing you see in Balamb is its marvelous Garden, all the nation talks about it, surely you've already heard of it!

Follow me, we're going to the city with my car."

Mayor Squall is going to bring us to the Garden.

On the following maps, you can see our path in the pictures!

RED ARROWS represent the path we take by foot

YELLOW ARROWS represent the path we run by car

Let's go. The first thing to do is leave the hill and go down it.

After reaching the base of the hill, there's a roundabout and then we turn left.

Access to Shin.Ra hill is protected by two tolls controlled by the SeeDs (a sort of guards of higher level).

Looking around here we can see a very rural area with some small houses. That is the Carbuncle Village.

Going on, we run nearby the 76 Area we saw before and the Obel Lake we watched in the post above. We're heading to the highway.

This area seems quiet and nice, and there are so many trees along the road.

The highway runs on the back of the Scalamanga Area (however there's no access to that suburb from the highway nor from the road we ran from ShinRa...) and through some nice campaigns and rural zones.

This is the so-called second Eastern City-Door.

On the top of the city entrance you can see the Carbuncle Bypass (Circonvallazione Carbuncle). It's full of running cars, even if it's not what we can call a rush hours (it's about 11:00 AM).

We enter a long long tunnel under the city then.

Out of the tunnel for the cloverleaf! We take the first exit on the right, and access the "Garden of Balamb Avenue" (Viale del Giardino di Balamb). 

In this pic you can also see, on the bottom, the traffic on Barambani Street! That jam is due to the A.R.C.O. gated area that, as we seen before, includes so many offices and workplaces. Look how many cars entering the ARCO!

A closeup view of the traffic in front of the A.R.C.O. workcenter.

We go straight ahead, then turn left at the crossing with Selphie Avenue. Then we U-Turn and park our car in one of the parkings of the Garden.

Being the morning of a workday, many parks are free because people is at work or school instead of touring the garden. Even if often people that work nearby the garden use to park their car in the garden park area.

Left the car, we go on by foot. The red arrows show you the path we make by foot.

An aerial view of the entire Garden area!

It's enormous and looks beautiful. It is even crossed and yet divided by an avenue. However the two half parts of the garden are connected by pedestrian overpasses.

Running along the street, we can also see a subway stop on our left. That would be useful to reach the garden by metro. However we've also saw that there's a subway station inside the garden too.

Finally we find our way in through the first open gate.

Next post we're going to tour the entire garden!!!

[jacqulina 162]

welcome back,and another great start very nice work with everything so far my friend,looking great and wonderfull pics

[politicman 1]

IT's very good maybe it's acity of fun LOL !

[sc4portugal 10]

Very good, it's an amazing City. no doubt and a beautiful one.

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

very nice city, i can see a lot of details were put in! great job!

[edmonton_stinks 5]

This city is absolutely gorgeous. Thanks for the additional great views, and I like the part about driving through the city. Great work!

[Dsrwhat316 12]

i like your use of tunnels. i am, once again, impressed by all of the greenery in the city; it makes everything feel so live and vibrant. great job!

[SODATWIN 7]

i like it

[Zelgadis 638]

Mayor Squall... Was there ever any doubt?

So, I guess your fourth CJ is going to be FFIX related?

ISF

[crazyarchitect 7]

WOW, this city is so beautiful, lots of thought and planning went into this one, can't wait to see more

[Cloud Strife 0]

Hey guys, thanks a lot for your comments!!! I'm so glad you like my city, really.

jacqulina - I'm very happy to read your comments in my third CJ too! Look forward to read even more of your opinions!!

zelgadis - eheh yeah maybe you would have bet that next time it would have be the time for Squall to be elected as mayor of a city  I did not like FF IX so much (it's the only FF I did not like very much), and in my room there's FF XII still sealed in its box (I didn't have time to play it yet! never opened it!)... so who can tell who will be the next mayor and what will be the next city eh eh

Now back to the CJ...

INTO THE GARDEN

As said before, we're by foot in the garden, so you'll see only red arrows on the map. I'm still going to show you the path we're walking through inside the garden.

Here's the entrance of the great Garden of Balamb. At least, ONE of the many entrances to the garden!

After a few steps we can see a marvelous fountain, parks, benchs, and some people having some relax and doing some gymnastics. We will see many people performing gymnastics or jogging around the garden. It's a cool place to pratice sport indeed.

We now follow Mayor Squall and take the path on the left. We're in front of an amphitheatre, or sort of that. On spring and summer, some spectacles are performed on that small stage. There are also other places to perform shows in the Garden, we're going to see them a few steps ahead.

Still proceeding on the left, we reach a religious area. We can see a nice church and a fountain between two crosses. Squall says the statue in the middle of the fountain represents Cid.

Right south of the fountain there's a small open temple with a statue of Sorceress Edea inside.

Still going left and following the path, we see another small theatre and a nice square.You can also see another of the entrances to the garden on the bottom of the pic.

On the top of it you can see the avenue that crosses the garden.

From that position, we can also see the very high pilar that is built in Bahamut Square.

A pic of the area seen from the other side. The red arrow shows you where are we, and where we're looking at (that is the pillar we was watching).

Now it's time to proceed up along the path then, at the crossing, we turn right. We see on our left a pedestrian overpass that allows to cross the avenue and access the other side of the Garden. We'll visit it later, says Squall, "there are other similar overpasses along this way".

We can also see a nice lake.

Still following the path, we walk north of the fountain we saw at the very beginning of this tour.

You can see the other overpasses, and some parkings and a bus stop along the inner avenue.

Another square, with a lake, and some statues. They represent the death of a sorceress and the SeeDs around her. It's from an unkown artist." says Squall.

Following the path, we see a small river on the bottom, and a cantina. 

Squall: "As you can see, there are also many entertaining places in the Garden. In summer it's full of people every night. In this club you can try and drink very good wine and*****tails of any kind."

Going up there's a bar.

Squall: "time for a break, and to try a good ice cream. let's go try the Bar of the Garden, You won't be sorry, I bet!"

We go then to this bar, get a table, and sit there talking with Squall of many things.

The ice cream is very good. We drink also some mineral water.

After the break, it's time to cross the avenue and tour the other half of the garden.

We leave the bar and head up, we see a statue. Squall says it represents Laguna, but it's a free interpretation of another unknown artist.

Squall: "all the statues and buildings you see in the garden are from unkown artists. They were all SeeDs at the time it was built. Unfortunately after the war, the Garden was destroyed and nothing is left written about the authors of all the art you can see around here."

Time to raise on the overpass. As soon as we're on the other side, we can immediately see a subway stop.

Squall: "this is the Garden of Balamb subway station. It has been built inside the Garden to allow people to easily reach it. It's very useful expecially on summer nights because many people prefer to return back home by subway or night bus service insted of driving their car. Consider that many young people drink a lot in the summer nights at the Cantina we saw before, so it's better not having them driving along those open avenues!"

Another shot of the subway station inside the garden.

Squall: "here the trains run under the sky. The tunnel gets interrupted at this point. It was not possible to build a regular subway station here, because the terrain of the garden is more fragile than the normal asphalt. It would have required to place enforcements and remove some parks in order to build a safe subway station. So it has been simpler to build a station this way."

On the left of the station there's the Aviary Park.

Still going left, we reach this curious area.

Squall: "This is called Park Number Eight. Park Of The Infinite. And even The End of Time Park. This is because you can look at it and see a number 8 or the symbol of infinity. Rumors say that it was dedicated to the concept of time continuum."

Walking left, we reach a stage area.

Squall: "Here is where many live acts take place! Every summer night there's a show here, from concerts, to classic music, theatre, cabarets, and even disco-dancefloor! Very big events are often performed here in winter too."

Another look at the stage.

Up of the stage there's a Railway F.S. Station too!

Squall: "This is the Zell Station, along Zell avenue. It's been built by F.S. Inc. It was initially built just thinking it could be useful to allow train commuters to get off right in the Garden. Expecially for tourists. However it has soon become an important station. Its small parking is full at any hour, and it's easily reacheable from the Zell Avenue thanks to the ramps you can see in the pic.

Commuters that have no rush can even get off the train here and take a walk in the garden in order to reach the subway station or the tram stop,

An aerial view of what is behind the stage.

Look at the left area of the pic. Can you see those car parkings? They belong to the Garden but even in working days (such as today) they're full of cars! All these vehicles belong to people that work around the Garden and find useful to park their car there because, being in the very heart of the city, it's not so useful to find free car parkings around there!

A closer pic. We can also look at the pillar from here.

Squall: "That tower is the only thing left of the original Garden. The Garden was a building where the SeeDs trained. That was a tower used to control the entire area from an elevated position."

We're now heading back, to watch the last part of the Garden, on the right of the subway station.

We can see a statue, a lake, and on the top of the pic a Tram stop.

A close up pic of the tram stop inside the Garden. It's a nice view from the trams running here.

Our tour of the Garden is over at this moment.

It's about 1:30 P.M. so Squall suggests to go have lunch.

Squall: "Let's have lunch. I'm going to bring you in a very good place, at the Chateau. You're going to experience the best restaurant in Balamb!"

So we're going back to the car ready to go to eat something with Squall!

[Zelgadis 638]

Ah, I have missed these guided tours. Nobody can do them like you do.

For me, FFVIII was the one that I hated. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying this CJ nonetheless. The storyline of the game was okay, but I got quite irritated by the overreliance on summons. I guess I'm more of a straight-forward attack sort of RPG player...

I still vote FFVII to be the best by far. I'd very much like to see a graphically updated version for PS3.

So... Perhaps instead it's going to be a FFVI CJ to look forward to!

ISF

[Dsrwhat316 12]

great tour! i like the outdoor concert stage and, of course, your parks! i bet it must be hell on they mayor's budget (and great income for the landscaping trade!). let's continue the tour soon!

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Gorgeous park. You just didn't stop at anything with this, did you? Extremely well done!