Advertisement
Published: April 6th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Day1 - Atlanta Preview The plan for the 1st day was for both Mingji and me to arrive in Atlanta ~2pm, check into the hotel near the airport, and hit up one or two spots in the city before dinner. Well, I guess the plans are made to be broken... The first offset was that it started raining with lightening. The second and a bigger offset was that the hotel shuttle took almost 1hr to get us. We were waiting by the curveside, sending off shuttle after another for all hotels but ours, as the rain started to fall harder and harder. Not off to a good start...
Since the rain calmed down and we had a bit of time before dinner, we walked around the Capital & CNN Center. But shortly after, rain started to make its come-back. Still, we were set on eating dinner at Gladys Knight's Chicken & Waffle place. By the time we reached the restaurant, my jeans were soaked to my knees. Needless to say that my shoes were squishy. Freezing and wet, the wait was 45min. It was worth the wait though. Both fried chicken and waffle were good 😊
Day2 - More Atlanta
Today was going to be a big day. We had tickets to the Aquarium & the Coke World. The aquarium was phenomenal! I must admit that I'm not a sucker for these attractions but I thought the aquarium was very well organized and creative. The highlight was definitely the Journey with the Giants. This is where the world's second largest viewing window is, to see whale shark, hummerhead shark, and sawtooth shark hanging out among other fishes. The Coke World is located right next to the aquarium. Thanks to Mingji, who pre-purchased the tickets, we avoided the huge line. The Coke World was pretty neat too. The tour ends with the tasting room. Tasting was devided into six sections; Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Coke derivatives. Some were yummy, others nasty 😱
Weather-wise...although it didn't rain, it was really really cold. Highs didn't quite reach 50F.
We ate lunch at the Varsity. The Varsity is a legendary drive-in. It is even mentioned at the subway stop among other institutions and landmarks!! I mean which eatery (fast-food at that!) gets mentioned on a subway?! The experience and the atmosphere were definitely unique. Inside, the counter
stretches for ~10 cashiers. Outside, the drive-in is done the old way (vs drive-thru). From there, Georgia Tech was just a minute away. Since it was Sunday, nothing was open, but I managed to get he Yellow Jackets shirts. Really cute! I thought that GT was in a good location - far enough from the city center but close enough for easy access. And yes, I AM a sucker for school mascots. GT totally played with my emotion. They had their little wasp everywhere! Campus shuttle was called the Singer Shuttle and check out the soap dispenser!! Way too cute!!!
We headed further up north via Piedmont Park. Nice area...just that I wished that the sky wasn't so gray. We didn't have particular plan for dinner. So by my request, we went to Wingnuts near GT. I've heard of this place and wanted to check it out It's a chicken wing fast-food chain where you can choose the sause. Pretty exciting for a wing-lover like me 😊 Since we had an early start and it was so darn freezing, we retreated to the hotel and caught the end of Kansas vs Davisdon game. Sounds low-key but watching a
sport game with Mingji was priceless!
Day3 - Savannah & Hilton Head Island Monday morning, we drove down to Savannah. The most important agenda in Savannah was to eat at the Lady and Sons. Food Network junkies out there, you know what this means. For everyone else, the restaurant is owned by Paula Deen. She is a cute bubbly TV chef who whips up southern cuisine in Savannah. The restaurant serves lunch/dinner southern comfort food buffet. Based on what we read, we were hoping to be seated for lunch so we didn't have to come back for dinner. As ridiculous as it sounds, lunch seating was fully booked when we got there at 11:15am. Insanity doesn't stop there. We got our dinner reservation for 9pm! Lunch goes from 11am to 3pm and dinner from 5pm to 11pm. Lunch is first-come-first-serve, no reservation. This means that between 11am opening to 11:15, all seats between 11am to 9pm were taken?!?! Outrageous to say the least. We found out later that the restaurant has three floors...so many seats!!! I still don't know how this happened in mere 15min!!! Food was ok...upgraded cafeteria food. Everything was excessively salty (sorry, Paula!)
In the
afternoon, we headed to Hilton Head Island. The weather caught up just in time for the beach resort. We finally got to relax a bit and to hit up salty dog ice cream
Day4 - Charleston We left Hilton Head at 5am for Charleston. Our rental car was due at 8am and we had to catch a flight at 4pm. Luckily, today went pretty smooth. Caught a bus to the city at 9, got into the city by 10. We strolled around town through the Market, the Battery and King St for a few hours. They we sat down for a Starbucks break (becoming out tradition at the conclusion of a trip...), then it was time to go back to the airport. Charleston was a cute town to stroll around, especially with my SLR.
So both of our flights were going through Atlanta. Mingji had 3-hr layover and I had 1-hr. Last minute, I got on an earlier flihgt to Atlanta so we could hang out in Atlanta for ~2-3hrs. This gave Mingji a crazy idea; to go into city, eat at the Varsity again. You might think 2.5hrs is plenty. But we had to go through
the security again and the train ride was ~1hr round trip. That gave us ~30min to do the rest - no room for mistake here! I was really nervous but we actually did it. It was a perfect way to conclude the trip to the peach state 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.033s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0198s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb