English Garden - on the Kleinhesseloher See

We take a lot of walks in the English Garden, but when friends came to visit recently we tried something new.
After walking by it many times, we finally rented a boat and went onto the Kleinhesseloher See (Lake).

Our prior post here has a Google map, but for reference the boathouse lies just north (left) of the Seehaus.
The biergarden to the right of the Seehaus is big -- perhaps a football field long with seats for 2500 people!

Moving left to right in the photo above:  kids in front of the Seehaus ready to launch radio-controlled boats... 

...in the middle, people enjoying the sunshine with a mass of beer, and swan/ducks hoping for handouts...

...and on the far right, picnic tables with the Sckell Säule (pillar) in the background.

The Sckell Säule is a monument to one of the lake's designers/creators, Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell.
Skell was the second designer, and expanded the lake to its current size of 86,000 square meters. 

Some people didn't even bother with finding a table at the biergarten and just found a place on the grass:

We took a paddleboat.  I sat in back - no pedaling!  Here we are going around one of the lake's three islands:

Our boat was square but could hold 6 people.  Others chose paddleboats that look like small motorboats...

...or chose a rowboat to get an upper body workout too (well, possibly just relax like these three):

Of course the fastest things on the lake were the waterfowl:

The "motorboat" styled paddleboats have a cover that can be raised and lowered:

These kids couldn't decided if they wanted the cover up or down, but definitely wanted to dip their feet in!

This girl had the same idea - sit on the side and splash around.

We headed back to shore after a half hour, then passed the Chinese Tower on the way back for a photo:

It was a great day.  Thanks L and M for visiting!  (and thanks for doing the pedaling for me)