SLIDESHOW | Weekend starts with plenty of sunshine

Well, I am so glad I got pink pancakes last weekend or I would have been thoroughly disappointed this morning! I strolled over to Central City Park about 10 this morning to get my second dose of those heavenly hot cakes and the line was trailing all the way out past the entrance to the park toward the parking lot. (That's the line in this top photo, but you can't even see how far it goes on.) I knew we might encounter a line at 10 a.m. since it was somewhat later and the weather was great, but I have NEVER seen the line that long before! One person we knew in line was not even at the halfway point and he said he had been waiting for 25 minutes!

Since the pancake breakfast only runs until 10:30 and we were really hungry, we decided to just walk back over to Third Street Park to the International Food Fair to get some breakfast since it started at 10. By the time we got there craving some Greek gyros, though, they told us it would be another 20-25 minutes before they had food ready. It was just not our morning food-wise. We wound up eating so-so chicken fingers and corndogs. Not very international, I know.

Variety-wise, the food fair was still somewhat of a disappointment this year. If you're going to call it international, then there should at least be a little more variety. Really, they just ought to call it a food fair or bill it as part of the Mulberry Street Festival and stop taunting people with visions of multicultural cuisine dancing in their heads. The selection didn't expand much beyond Greek, Mexican and Jamaican. There was also a rib-eye place and the usual brats stand, but those don't count as international in my book.

As for the Mulberry Street Festival, it was drawing a huge crowd as usual. The weather, a little on the hot side, was definitely helping to get things going. Here's a tip, though, if you're going to head out there: You may want to wait until later in the afternoon so that maybe some of the buildings will be casting a shadow over Mulberry Street to make the sun a little more bearable. I was lucky and didn't come back home with a sunburn, but it was a close call.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PHOTOS FROM SATURDAY IN DOWNTOWN MACON.