photos: 400 (129 in gallery) - 485 (285 in gallery)

The theme for today will become obvious so I’ll just state it now- CACTI and lots of them!!!

Note for future -avoid room 105 (and 103,104,106) due ti insane use of insanely loud ice machine at all hours! Apparently, since it’s free, all the neighborhood party boys raid it constantly for ice to take home. We were both daydreaming about how we could sabotage the damned thing just to get some peace and quiet!

We weren’t thinking about going anywhere for breakfast but we were both a little hungry and had some extra time so we decided to go back to the Mexican diner we ate at on Wednesday morning. It was delicious again! Rich had the machaca with over-medium eggs and crisp flour tortilla and a little verde sauce on top, and I had the chilaquiles with green sauce and scrambled eggs and beans, of course.

First stop was the Botanical Gardens. Based on online reviews I didn’t expect to spend too much time there, maybe 2 hours if we took our time. Well I was off by a lot! We were there over 4 hours and loved every minute of it. There are at least 10-12 volunteer docents working there, mostly but not all elderly, and they obviously love their work. They were all friendly and came right up to us to explain how the butterfly exhibit works, how the cafe is, about guided tours and to answer any of our questions. We first went into the butterfly exhibit, whet everyone loved the butterflies on our hats from Key West, including the butterflies themselves. The tropical habitat was warm and humid with neat tropical plants like nepenthes and an enormous hibiscus. The butterflies were everywhere and seemed pretty calm so they posed quite well for photos. We were looking at the poison dart frog ehibit when we realized it was 10:00, time for the guided tour. The tour was pretty interesting, especially the walk through the special Frida Kahlo exhibit. (“Diego Rivera was a womanizer-when you see him you’ll wonder why!” Yeah, ugh!) We saw the evocation of her Casa Azul and cactus gardens (and small zoo!) and later, some portrait photos of her by Nickolas Muray. Then began the stroll through the 16 gardens, featuring desert plants, prrhistoric plants, Mediterranean trees and fruit trees, and more. We knew we wanted to spend the most time in the cactus gardens, so we had a snack and drink first at the little cafe Botanica. Prickly pear iced tea, which was good but didn’t taste like the one we have at home, this one had cardamom, and a currant-cardamom scone with lime-kumquat marmalade that was so good I was scooping out the rest of it and eating it plain after we finished the scone.

The cactus gardens were as extensive and impressive as you would expect from cactus garden in the southwest. Many specimens were old and huge and all were in excellent condition, growing happily. Flowers sounded to since it’s spring. The photos will really tell the story here!

Next stop was the B & B cactus farm not far from the eastern section of Saguaro np. As soon as we pulled into the parking area I could trek this was going to be a special place. It might not have been quite as large as the place in Florida but they had get succulents and mostly cacti of ALL A kinds, shapes and sizes. Great selection of pots and containers too, including many square and straight-sided round containers that we can’t get at home. Too bad we have no way to take them with us.

We did, however, buy 4 small cacti to take with us, or at least try to. We got a purple Eriosyce, Echinocereus, Echinofossulocactus, and Thelocactus that should bloom with a large scented flower. We also got a box for them so hopefully we can get them home in one piece.

We were both in the mood for pizza (I think I surprised Rich with my suggestion of pizza, actually) but I had already found a place that sounded pretty good, Grimaldi s. It’s actually a chain based on the famous pizza place in new York, but the reviews, at least for the tucson location, were very good and it sounded like our kind of pizza. We drove to the restaurant right after leaving the cactus farm rather than going back to the room to wash up as we usually do. It was only a little after 4pm but it was already getting busy … it’s Friday after all. We both ordered beer - new Belgium Citradelic - and we decided to go big and get 2 twice inch pizzas, one white with garlic and one margherita. We wanted to try both and figured we could eat any relaying pieces for breakfast tomorrow. The pizza was crisp and thin with a very tasty crust, which is something we both really appreciate and is hard to find. We ate all but 2 slices which we brought home with us. A cannoli for dessert sounded great but we didn’t have enough room!