Advertisement
Published: January 11th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Well I woke to find out it was minus 6 and with wind chill actually minus 15. Decided to head away straight towards Atlanta as a major winter storm was still being predicted to hit the southern states later tonight.
Atlanta is famous for a few things being the home of Coca-Cola, host of 1996 Olympic Games and CNN. It also has the largest free standing granite rock in the world known as Stone Mountain.
The drive was only about 200km and the skies were mostly overcast. I was amazed at just how many signs we saw for Waffle House along the drive which looks like a dump but must be OK if they have so many outlets. I guess they sell Waffles !
As we approached the Atlanta area we decided to get some lunch at Cracker Barrell since we enjoyed it so much last time. We really enjoyed this as they provide such good meals and the atmosphere is great. Today I had the roast beef with sides of baby carrots, dumplings and hashbrowns. The meat had been cooked for 14 hours and was so soft. This cost $8.95 !
Atlanta has a ring road
of freeways so we decided to try going west along Freeway 285 to get a view of Stone Mountain around Spaghetti Junction before heading into downtown. Caught a glimpse of it but it probably looks better from the other side. This rock is the largest single piece of granite in the world and looks like a white rock version of Uluru (pretty impressive). We keep seeing warnings signs on the freeway saying major storm arriving at 7PM tonight. One thing about the weather it that it has all been very predicable with forecasts proving to be very accurate.
We arrived in midtown Atlanta around 3PM and we are staying at the Artmore Hotel in the arts precinct. We’ve got a split level 2 bedroom apartment which looks ideal.
Car Hire was supposed to finish at 10am tomorrow but I decided that since the forecast was for a major storm and possible snow and sleet that it would be best to drop it off today so I don’t have to worry about driving in the bad weather. The Hertz depot was downtown so I had the catch the MARTA train back from Peachtree station and ride for 5 stops
north to the Arts Centre station which is right across the road from the Hotel.
I was bit gobsmacked when a large lady sat next to me and whilst she was dressed normally from waist up she only had nickers on below ! I did not want to attract any undue attention to myself as Atlanta used to have the highest murder rates in America (I believe it got cleaned up a lot just prior to 96 Olympics). At the next station she got up and on came about 20 other people all doing the same thing (just undies !). Guys & girls and I soon realised this must be some sort of sorority college routine as we were in Arts precinct adjacent to Georgia Tech a well known US college. At each stop they would all get off and move to a different carriage. Weird !
Once I got back to the room the family had settled in so we decided to catch the free bus to Atlantic Station precinct only about 1 km away. Lots of restaurants around a real entertainment precinct.
Found a place called Fox Sports Grille which was a combined sports bar & restaurant. Kerry ordered some Onion Rings for us to share as entree, They look like massive Calimari rings but have stringy onion inside the batter. Real difficult to eat especially when they were hot. Ordered a Thai chicken wrap and a side of broccoli, a couple of Bud Lights to wash down and watch the NFL wild card playoff game between Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. Real atmosphere in the bar area where everyone was getting into the game. The Packers would go on to win.
We caught the shuttle bus back around 7PM as we knew the storm was coming. I took a photo of the hotel courtyard as I suspect it may look a bit different tomorrow. As I close this blog snow has started falling and the kids are very excited. Snowflakes just drifting down as you see in the movies !
We now have two days in Atlanta and we’ll see what the weather is like before making any plans.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0208s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb