Albany Tulip Festival 2007: The Park

When you enter Washington Park from the West, you walk along a pond that has a scenic little bridge that spans the water as a path to the lake house. This is an interesting structure that has a performance space on the north side where free shows are offered to the summer night crowds. The stage is within a bowl that is recessed into the building — think Hollywood Bowl in shape but not nearly as big or nice. Across a paved space from the stage is a tiered space cut into the facing hill for folks to sit and enjoy the entertainment. There are about eight tiers held in place by railroad ties four high and about six feet deep. I'd have taken a picture of this area but they had a "modern" staged place in front of it and it was pretty ugly.

Moving further into the park we encountered our first of the food booths. The friends we met had recommended the pina colada smoothies. Heavy on the pineapple, light on the coconut. Perfect! I also had a chicken pita and oil-soaked spiral cut deep fried potatoes. Nothing to rave about... this was fair-type fare so I can't really complain that I got what I ordered.

As we made our way to the center of the park where the tulips were planted I was surprised by the number of food vendors and booths selling artwork, specialty food items, etc. It reminded me of the pride festivals I've gone to in Atlanta (Piedmont Park) and San Diego (Balboa Park) except there wasn't a rainbow trinket in sight!

We emerged from under the canopy of trees to be greeted by Moses.

Side Note: On my travels, I saw a church sign board that read:

"Don't give up. Even Moses was a basket case."

Next up were the tulip beds. Tons and tons of tulips. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, over 200,000 bulbs were planted. Many of those were grape hyacinths. A picture of those types of flowers will be later in the week as I post the pics I took of mine in our garden last week.

Here are my favorite tulip pictures from the day:














































*