Atlanta Botanical Garden / Mary Mac's

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For Chris's Grandparent's anniversary, we joined his family and headed to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens as a group. The gardens are located next to Piedmont park, and I honestly had never known they were even there.

The facilities were amazing. We began our self guided 'tour' by visiting all the outside area's, and then working our way into the buildings with the more exotic plants. One even had birds running around among the foliage. The highlight for the group was the large room with more varieties of Orchids than I thought ever existed.

One of my personal favorites was the children's garden area. (I will always be a kid at heart) and that the entire facility had large wooden 'sculptures' of insects scattered around for photo ops. The $12 admission might be considered a bit steep, but it's suddenly worth it armed with a camera. I think I took some of my best pictures ever there. I do recommend a visit. (TIP: Eat before you go, the food available inside is pricey)

After leaving the botanical gardens, we headed over to Mary Mac's. It's a legend in the area, and has pictures and documents all over the walls from all the years. The Dalai Lama has even eaten there! There were 8 people in our group, and we were seated within 5 minutes - and the food! Wow! For the fair price, there was so much food! Each person writes down what they want on their own ticket, so it eliminated order errors. Mary Mac's was about the atmosphere more so than the service. It's just a nice down home type of place to eat. (Even though our waiter wasn't exactly from the South...)

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