Atlanta - day three - thursday

I started my morning at the botanical garden. I like botanical gardens bc I enjoy the flowers and landscaping, sometimes though I think they are priced too high. I don't even know how much this one cost bc I bought a city pass for 64 and figured that if the aquarium was 30 then I must be saving some money, especially since I used all the tickets in my city pass and it got me some discounts at other stops. The botanical garden was pretty and had a beautiful orchid display (which if you know anything about the difficulty of growing them and infrequency of blooming, you'd at least appreciate it). I enjoyed the kids garden and the gnomes next to the waterfall. Really is there any better place to be than a garden in the spring?

I walked to the High Museum of Art with a highly publicized Louvre exhibit. I don't really like that style of art so I sort of breezed through it. I breeze through many parts of art museums and take my time when I see stuff I like. They had an O'Keefe exhibit I enjoyed and heaps of antique wood furniture. One of the docents complemented me on my calf muscles and was astounded when I told him I had walked all the way from Ponce.

Next stop was the Center for Puppetry Arts, free on Thursdays from 1-4. They have puppet performances several times a day, but they were sold out through the weekend when I called, so I settled with a free museum. I really enjoyed this place. They offered a history of puppetry from different cultures with examples. They also had displays and hands on operating of different types of puppets including some of the more modern ones with levers and switches. I laughed at the special exhibit on Salem the cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch (I used to love watching TGIF) with all of his costumes and scripts and several Salem models. They also had a film montage running with scenes from the show. They probably had 100 Salem costumes there. They also had a special exhibit on Jim Henson that later (2012) will be in a much larger wing with more stuff. They already had a Skeksi from the Dark Crystal (super scary) and some Pigs from Space in the other part of the museum. The Jim Henson Exhibit included Kermit, Rowlf, Ernie, and several other puppets as well as film and photos of his work through the years. The behind the scenes footage was funny to watch bc you see Jim and the other guys running around with their arms held high supporting puppets - and usually the puppeteers are masked by the elevated sets. I loved this museum - probably bc of the childhood memories (and I am not that old!).

On my way back to the hostel I stopped in at the Margaret Mitchell House and went on the tour. Margaret Mitchell is famous for writing Gone with the Wind. It was funny to me bc it is called the MM House, but she only lived in the basement apartment and it is finished with period furniture, not original furniture. They don't have anything original from her or her house. She ordered her husband to destroy any of her writing if she were to die before him so there aren't even any scripts from the book. They have a small museum about the making of the movie with the original door frame from Tara and the painting of Scarlett from the movie. I haven't seen the movie so it was only of passing interest to me. An interesting thing about the movie is that MM disagreed with most of it - how people were portrayed, the way buildings looked etc. Margaret hated segregation and the way blacks were treated so she used her millions of dollars to sponsor a black medical clinic and FIFTY scholarships for black medical students anonymously.

For dinner I went to Gladys Knight's and Ron Winan's Chicken and Waffles. I ordered the midnight train - four of the hugest chicken wings I have ever seen and a large waffle. Yum. I couldn't pass up dessert bc they offered sweet potato cheesecake that was fabulous.