Lawrenceville, GA to Shreveport, LA

Monday, September 17, 2012

Hello!

I’m going to try and catch up with everything that has happened since Friday, but as I have a memory like a sieve, we’ll just have to see…

Lawrenceville Courthouse

Saturday we planned first to go to the Suwanee Day festival, but when we got close, the crowds were absolutely intense – so, quick change of plans, and back to historic, downtown Lawrenceville for a stroll around town.  It’s really a beautiful city center!  The lovely courthouse towered over everything, and there were information plaques all around town talking about the various buildings; great fun and very interesting!  Arden was hungry, so we stopped at an Italian place for pizza.  And it was FABULOUS!  Honestly, I don’t know when we’ve had such good pizza, outside of Italy!  After that we had some wonderful frozen yogurt, then headed home for our afternoon naps.

Brenda and Chris’ friend Heather arrived at 4:30 p.m. to watch the kids, as the “adults” (and I use the term loosely, seeing I’m involved…) were going out for dinner.  It took about 45 minutes to get downtown to Bacchanalia, which, according to Brenda, is the #1 ranked place in Atlanta!  The restaurant is attached to a store called “Star Provisions” – which is great!  As we were early (they open at 6:00 p.m.) we wandered through the store – fabulous cheese selections, a great bakery, an impressive butcher shop – very definitely a destination on its own!  

We were seated at 6:00, and joined by Brenda and Chris’ friends Mike and Tiffanie, who live in downtown Atlanta, so had a much shorter commute than we did! 

The Menu

Corn chowder with fennel stem and basil oil

Bacchanalia offers a five-course menu, which changes every night.  There are five or six choices for each of the courses, and I think between the five of us, we covered most of them!  Robert isn’t very happy about how the photos came out (very low lighting and he didn’t want to use the flash), but hopefully you’ll be able to get an idea of what we had.  Each course was presented beautifully – none of the courses were very large, meaning that by the end of the meal, we were satisfied but not stuffed.  All in all it took 3 hours for everything.  They do have suggestions of a wine pairing with each course, but as the three ladies weren’t drinking (Brenda is nursing, Tiffanie is expecting, and I was D.D.) nobody went overboard, and I think each guy had one glass of wine!

Stuffed squab

Filet

To summarize (as best I can), R’s meal was:  (1) a kind of sashimi using yellow-fin tuna; (2) filet of trout; (3) stuffed breast and leg of squab; (4) blue cheese course; (5) trio of melon sorbets.  I had (1) fois gras with toasts; (2) crab fritter; (3) fillet of beef (outstanding!!!); (4) blue cheese; (5) warm chocolate cake with mint ice cream. 

After dinner we retired down the street to a Starbuck’s for hot chocolate (the ladies) and coffee (the guys).  Mike and Tiffanie are really a neat couple, and we very much enjoyed meeting them and spending a great evening at a fabulous restaurant with them and Brenda and Chris!!  Back home about 11:00, and very quickly to bed and to sleep!

We had decided to have a very low-key on Sunday.  We watched the end of Salmon Fishing on the Yemen and Sherlock Holmes 2 (with Robert Downey) [note from RJB – Just about the dumbest movie I have ever seen],  and I did some laundry in Brenda’s very modern and fancy washer and dryer, and we got to bed about 10:00.

Up this morning before 6:00; packed up and out the door by approximately 6:45 a.m., as we had heard how difficult traffic can be in Atlanta.  It was so HARD to say goodbye to Arden, Brenda, Chris and Dara, but we are hopeful that they will be able to visit us in Tucson soon!!

We decided to make a large detour around Atlanta to avoid the legendary rush-hour traffic.  It took us almost 2½ hours to wind our way around the northern suburbs and finally reach the freeway to Birmingham, AL on the far west side of Atlanta.  Whether or not we saved time is an open question but it certainly was less aggravating than sitting in stalled traffic on a freeway.  From there, we had a straight shot to Shreveport, LA – all the way through Alabama and Mississippi and to the far side of Louisiana.  We did have some truly horrendous weather to navigate, though – rain – torrential at times – coming down, and occasionally almost a complete “white out” so that you could hardly see anything ahead of the car at all.  Fortunately we made it through safely, and arrived in Shreveport about 5:30 p.m. and are now in our wonderful hotel – Homewood Suites by Hilton – in a huge two-bedroom suite with living room, full kitchen and two bathrooms!  

Went to Becca’s for dinner – just a short drive down the road.  It was pretty basic – how do you like your fried food?? But I got a great steak with twice-baked potato and salad, and R had grilled shrimp with potato and salad.  We returned to the hotel ready for an early night…another 10 hour driving day tomorrow to Carlsbad, NM – and from there to Tucson on Wednesday, and we’ll be home!!

Much love,

m

xxx