Madison Day Two

Wednesday 21st April

This morning we all met up at Perk Avenue again after bidding farewell to our respective families. We enjoyed a lovely breakfast of various filled bagels and coffee. Andrea was very pleased to see English tea was on the menu and Gareth seemed to be reverting back to his old self by ordering a ‘porker’!

Our host Andy then kindly gave us the morning to enjoy the lovely town of Madison in our own time which is something we haven’t had much opportunity to do so far. Madison itself is a lovely town which had many quaint antiques shops a lovely little dairy fudge cafe. It has actually been voted the best small town in the whole of the USA by an American magazine. We were later told that the magazine went out of print some years ago but Madison is still proudly holding on to the title!

Roy, Alison and Andrea headed to the local park which was a lovely green lawned area complete with bandstand to soak up a bit of the beautiful sunshine of which we tend to view mostly from air conditioned rooms.

Steve ran as fast as his little legs could carry him to the toy shop to purchase his Tonka truck and proceeded to show us how he used to play with his original!

Steve also got the chance to visit Tim the Madison Fire Chief and Bank Manger
 

Andy then kindly passed us over to Betty who obviously noticed how malnourished we were looking, so she took us to a lovely all you can eat restaurant called the Blue Willow Inn. The buffet consisted of all things southern. New experiences included chicken and dumpling soup, which looked remarkably like wallpaper paste but the brave members who sampled it said it was actually quite tasty. We also tried fried green tomatoes and fried chicken livers. Yum!
 

Following much conversation over lunch on the group’s latest obsession ‘GUNS’ Ken, Betty’s husband gave us all a chance to pose for a picture with his 9mm semi automatic pistol. Not one passer by batted an eyelid as each member of the took turns to ‘pack some heat’ in the carpark.

Gangster Moll No1

Gangster Moll No 2

Gangster Moll No 3

Are you pleased to see me!

Our next destination was Rome and we arrived at Rome Country Club where the group spilt and headed back with their respective families to change for Dinner. Andrea and Allison were together and the three boys had separate families to stay with.

Rome Country Club is a grand place and Rome Rotary had kindly arranged a welcome dinner for our group and a select few of the Rome Rotarians. We discovered that Rome is the oldest and largest rotary club in Georgia with over 200 members. We all enjoyed a delicious meal and were made to feel very welcome by our Roman hosts who provided each team member with a goodie bag which included a full and detailed itinerary of our time in Rome.