Birthday Month Part 2...

On the Sunday after my birthday Trevor surprised me with a day trip to Lenox Mass. We had been wanting to tour Edith Wharton's house, The Mount and wanted to get there this summer in case they don't make it through their financial troubles... It was an absolutely gorgeous tour of the house and gardens - some of the rooms haven't been rehabbed yet so you see them in their bare bones state, and others are absolutely stunning.

This is Edith Wharton's library. None of the furniture in the house is original, but the books are. (It's really sad how much of the decor - plaster, etc. had to be recreated from photos. So many beautiful buildings were lost to neglect in this silly country) You might think this is where she wrote, but they said that she preferred to write in bed right after waking. In fact, it said that she would drop the hand written pages onto the floor next to the bed for her assistant to type up for her later. :-)

Here are a few pictures of the gardens, and the house as viewed from the gardens.
After The Mount we went to try and find this chocolate shop I had seen online, the Chocolate Springs Cafe. They have gorgeous chocolates, fancy chocolate desserts, gelato, and bags of other sorts of chocolate delights.
We each picked out two chocolates and a beverage.

Mine were both very yummy, Trevor didn't like one of his but I think he's just not a fan of chocolate mixed with tea...

They even have a window so you can look into the chocolate room and watch them working with the chocolate.

After eating dessert first, we went to the strangely named Dish Cafe Bistro for a late lunch. (in my opinion you are a cafe or a bistro but not both...) But either way, we had a good meal. I had something a little different, along the lines of a make your own pizza, it was a grilled flatbread with a list of toppings you could choose from. I got feta, leeks, and mushrooms and it was really, really good.

Lenox is another of the really pretty little towns in the Berkshires, up there with Stockbridge for general prettiness. A good place for a weekend or daytrip.

(oh, edited to say that this crossed daytrip off the birthday month list!)