A weekend in the garden....

The Atlanta Botanical Garden that is!

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, and after only being home 2 weeks, mom and I took a quick trip up to Atlanta.

Originally when we planned the trip we didn't really have anything specific in mind to do, other than stop at Trader Joe's and load up on wine...hey, girls have to drink! But a co-worker mentioned there was an exhibit at the botanical garden of Henry Moore sculptures.

I had never heard of Henry Moore, but googled the Atlanta Botanical Garden website and it looked like an interesting place to spend a few hours.

We left home on Saturday morning in pounding rain, and it didn't let up for several hours...not a fun drive. After making a quick stop at an outlet center outside Atlanta we arrived in the Perimeter Area of Atlanta right around lunch time, so a stop at Doc Green's for a salad and sandwich were in order.

We checked into the hotel just after 4pm. We had plenty of time to freshen up before we were to meet Regi, Scott and Julia and Parish ( http://www.parishatl.com/home.php) for dinner. Scott met us at the hotel just after 6:30 and we piled into my car to go to the restaurant.

It was a fun evening of good food, wine and friends. Parish is in the Inman Park neighborhood, which mom and I have started to explore more on each of our trips to Atlanta and we are liking more and more every time we are there...lots a great restaurants.

We said our goodbyes after dinner and headed back to the hotel. And yes, it was still raining. Not as heavily, but it was still grey and cloudy.

Mom and I woke up on Sunday to more grey clouds, but the rain was holding off. We decided to go to the botanical garden in spite of the threatening weather. After a quick stop for breakfast at the Einstein Brothers bagel shop down the street from the hotel we were equipped with google directions to the garden. In less then 30 minutes we arrived and bought our tickets.

It was about 11am and although there were others at the garden, it was not packed with people. In the main visitor lobby of the garden there is a beautiful Dale Chihuly glass chandelier...I love his work. With a map to the garden and sculptures we were on our way.

What a pretty place. The flowers and gardens are lovely and the sculptures, which are enormous were placed perfectly. There were 20 or 25 sculpture. We spent about 2 and a half hours wandering through the garden looking at each and every sculpture. And we were fortunate to have the rain hold off, so we didn't get wet. A highlight of the garden was the orchid conservatory...truly beautiful flowers. I managed to take 250+ pictures!

When we were ready to leave we went back to the lobby area and in a room off to the side there was a 30 minute video of the life of Henry Moore, a really interesting man. It was a fabulous way to spend the morning/early afternoon.

Lucky for us on the way to the garden I noticed a Caribou Coffee Company shop just down the street, so at about 3pm we stopped for a cold icy coffee before finding the TJ Maxx in Buckhead where I did some serious damage to my credit cards.

Before our shopping excursion I texted Regi to see if he wanted to join us for dinner and he said yes. I had made a reservation on Open Table for a place called Parks Edge...I chose this place mostly because for a Sunday night reservation I would get 1000 points. This place did not disappoint!

We arrived about 30 minutes early and the place was not crowded at all, so we sat at the bar waiting for Regi and chatting with the owner, Richard...he is quite an interesting guy. After about 45 minutes Regi arrived and we chatted more with Richard before sitting down in the dining room.

The food was absolutely fantastic. We had 2 appetizers, a calamari dish and a goat cheese filled wonton dish...both were delicious! I had the swordfish entree, Regi and the snapper and shrimp entree and I can't remember what mom had, but it was also a fish dish. Everything was fabulous and to top it all off we had the warm blueberry tart...yummo!

Another great meal and a terrific way to end our weekend! Monday morning we made our requisite stop at Trader Joe's to stock up on wine and other sought after goodies and we were back on the road going home by 11:30.