Julie's Journal

Edward & Mary Ann arrived last Thrusday and left early Sunday morning. We were all prepared to show them Lakeland, but Edward just wanted to play golf, so he and Dan played Friday and Saturday. After I played tennis with all of the guys Friday morning, Mary Ann & I went touring. We toured Florida Southern campus located on Lake Hollingsworth downtown, where there is the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs - 12 buildings in all. Interesting uses of light and stone. Then, we went to Lake Mirror and walked through Hollis Gardens and all the around the lake (not even a mile). On the other side of the lake was an interesting building that we found out was Amtrak - the train station. We went over and up to the check in area and found that there are trains going all over the place from Lakeland. MA & Edward think they will ride the train down next January.
I took her to see Lake Morton and it is the one nicknamed "Swan Lake" because there are a jillion swans of all colors there. We ate at a sub place downtown and took lots of side streets. Mary Ann was totally impressed with how beautiful Lakeland is.
Friday night we had Patsy, Bob, Carol, David & Andrew down for cocktails then we all went to an Italian restaurant at the Lakeland Airport afterwards.
Saturday, Mary Ann, Carol, Patsy and I went to Dade City for the famous Cumquat Festival. It was really fun. That will probably be an annual outing for us. There were many craft artists, all sorts of food and we all even were given a bag of tangerines.
Bob and Carol invited us to go to a Wine Tasting Saturday night at Tim's Wine Shop. It was a private party just for Bob & Carol and there were a total of 13 of us. We had seven different Sharaz Wines from around the world, very generous servings, plus a complete delicious dinner of salmon, pork tenderloin, marrinaded broccoli, great potatoes, all sorts of beautiful cheeses and fruits and bread. That was an event we'll always remember. We enjoyed meeting some of their friends who we did not previously know, and to get to be with Jill & Tom again.
Mary Ann and Edward have made reservations in Mulberry for next January.