Oo-ooh that smell...

Here they are...the long awaited, much anticipated Gilroy Garlic Festival pictures!

We decided to visit the festival on Sunday (July 29th) in the hopes that the crowds would be smaller toward the end of the weekend. (Ha!) We got directions and checked the weather forecast to see if we needed to bring warm clothes. (Yeah right!) We're about 1 1/2 hours from Gilroy, so we left around 11am thinking that we would be garlicked out after only a few hours. (That's the only thing we got right all day.) It turned out that there were so many people going that the highway was backed up the last 20 miles to Gilroy. Once we got through the back up and got off the highway, there were so many people that it took us another hour to get to the festival. We finally parked just in view of the entrance...


We were hoping that the entrance would show up in this picture, but it's just beyond those trees in the background. It's so far away that we could barely see the 12 foot long banner over the entrance. (We took this photo on our way out. Abby is holding the garlic braid that is now hanging in our kitchen.)

The weather was at least in the mid-90s without a cloud in the sky. (The heat index must have been at least 350 degrees.) We walked in and finally made it onto the grounds. It was a lot like a small county fair. It was laid out in a square with tons of food booths around three sides and a music stage on the fourth. There were a few rows of craft booths in the center, but they had regular fair-y crafts, not a bunch of stuff made out of garlic or made to look like garlic. Here are some of the food booths.

By the time we got in, we were both starving so we had garlic fries (with at least a head of garlic on them--maybe two), garlic kalamari, garlic bread, and crawfish etoufee. We tried to get a pepper steak sandwich (with garlic), but the line was too long.

As you can see, there wasn't much shade, so we stayed away from the garlic beverage options. We couldn't pass up the chance to eat garlic ice cream, though.


They didn't have just plain garlic, but they had the five flavors listed on the sign with garlic. We really debated what to get.





The garlic roasted almond sounded the least objectionable (since we both like garlic almonds) but we thought the garlic vanilla sounded like it would let the garlic come through the most. In the end we decided to go for the garlic vanilla.






Here is Abby "enjoying" some garlic vanilla ice cream. (Doesn't she look convincing!) She wasn't such a fan, but I didn't think it was too bad. I probably never have to have it again, but it wasn't horrible. When I took a bite, it tasted like plain vanilla ice cream, but after I swallowed it, all I could taste was garlic.

Anyway, we wandered around a bit, bought our garlic braid, and got some refreshing treats to eat on our way out. Abby had frozen strawberries and peaches on a stick dipped in chocolate and I had a shaved ice (I passed up the garlic flavor in favor of lime.) We walked out and made it back to the highway (the same route that took us an hour to get in) in under 10 minutes.

It was a once in a lifetime experience. (We're glad we did it, but we probably don't need to go again.) I'd recommend it, but try to go on a day when it's cooler or at least cloudy.