Fall Festivals

In between all the sporting events we've attended lately, we managed to squeeze in a few festivals here in Atlanta. Fall is by far our favorite season here, and we definitely make the most of it.

First up, was Taste of Atlanta. We had never been to this food and wine festival, and over a lunch date I met one of the volunteer coordinators. Free food and wine for a few hours of work? Sign me up! Bo and Dudley joined me, and we all had a blast. We worked in the VIP tent, where admission price is $75 per ticket for all you can eat and drink. We helped setup by unloading a truck of beer and wine, and taking them to the right tables. Our main job was to pour wine at the La Fiera table - my favorite being their Venetian Pinot Grigio. We worked the first shift, and had the remainder of the day to enjoy the festival. We made some new friends, discovered great wines, and tried a few samplers from nearby restaurants - all in all, a fantastic day. I don't think we would pay to attend (it's one of the pricier events), but we will definitely volunteer again! :)

Our favorite beer festival of all time is the Decatur Craft Beer Festival. It's the only thing Bo is willing to miss a Gator football game for - it's that good. We've gone the past few years and this year we decided to volunteer. Not quite the same experience as Taste of Atlanta. This one was actual work. We worked the Allagash table, which was kind of hidden and some people had trouble finding us. My favorite was the White (a Belgian wheat beer), and it was the first one we ran out of. To be perfectly honest, we were pouring very heavily. As new volunteers, we got stuck with the second shift which started at 2pm - and the Gators played South Carolina at 3:30pm. It was a very busy shift. Bottled beer is a pain to serve, since we were constantly moving warm cased beer into ice buckets, and then into serving buckets, and then having to open each bottle as we went. We got about 3-4 tasting pours out of each bottle, and we had a pretty long line at our tent almost the entire time - aka constantly busy! We were decked out in our Gator gear, and made a new friend who was watching the game on his phone and gave us updates in return for non-stop flowing beer. We finally ran out of beer as the first half of our game was ending and headed home to catch the second half. We had a good time, but we don't plan to volunteer again. We'd rather pay for tickets and go back to just enjoying this festival like we did last year.

Our third and final festival was the Stone Mountain Highland Games, which we also went to last year with Josh's family. We tried to find Bo's Clan Boyd but they weren't at the festival, so we'll be on the lookout for them next year. Josh just about made his Nana's year when he drunkenly promised her the night before that he would wear a kilt to the festival. She of course made sure he went through with it :)

stone put

caber toss

Bo enjoyed his kilt koozie and gator cane purchase