Saratoga Springtime

I 'm up in Saratoga Springs for a couple of days to visit my daughter and to enjoy the area one last time before Clara graduates and moves away.  Spring has sprung here and I am enjoying all the flowers and fruit trees and the blue skies.

We dined at Max London's last night.  Clara had a wonderful panzanella with duck confit for starters.  My green salad was drowning in vinegar and I had to send it back -- the first mistake I've ever encountered here.  My mushroom pizza with a baked egg on it made up for the salad mistake and we shared a butterscotch budino for dessert.  Tonight we will go to Hattie's for the fried chicken, which was featured -- and won -- on Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

We parked behind the Adirondack Bank last night and came upon marvelous garden of red tulips.  The temperature had dropped with the sun and they were all closed up and leaning toward the west.  I didn't have a camera, but they were just gorgeous.  I went back today and took a photograph, but they were much more stunning in the dusk last night.  I wanted to pick them all.

While Clara was in a critique this morning, I drove out to the monument at the Saratoga Battleground.  The monument was built for the centennial of the Battle of Saratoga, which we won in 1777.  It's an impressive Victorian monument, built next to the Prospect Hill cemetary.