Atlanta, 2013
It seems to be becoming a yearly tradition to visit Jay in Atlanta
in December, and who am I to disrupt it? :-)
Friday December 13, 2013
I had run out of vacation days by this point in the year, so it was a shorter trip than I'd have liked to
do. I had packed my hiking poles so I brought my small suitcase with me on the bus to work that morning. I
met up with a co-worker who lives down the hill from me and we shared a ride on the CT2. I hadn't been
updated as to the progress of the re-carpeting in my office area, and ended up kicked out of my office at
12:30 since they were ripping up the old carpet and I'd have been "trapped". I set up in the conference
room in an area that had already been re-done and managed to get a decent amount of work done, probably
partially due to internet connection problems. Then as I was packing up to head to the airport, I realised
that if I didn't want to bring all my work stuff to Atlanta with me, I'd need to find a place other than my
office to stash it for the weekend, with the extra requirement of being able to get it back on Monday
morning. Luckily my bus riding co-worker was around and let me lock my laptop etc in her desk and I was on
my way to Georgia. Because I'd been thrown off by the various upheavals, I hadn't had a chance to prepay
for my checked suitcase, and also had to print out my boarding pass (but lesson well learned: I check in as
soon as I can even if I can't print the pass). I was flying out of Terminal A on Delta, and it was
surprisingly calm for a Friday, I was able to get my admin stuff done and through security and walk over to
the area with my gate fairly quickly. The good trip karma continued and we had a fast flight south,
arriving early. I had time to get over to baggage claim and pick up my suitcase and was waiting outside
when Jay arrived.
I'd found a deal via Travelocity to prepay at Staybridge Suites in
Buckhead, which is apparently a good part of town and the rate I'd found was awesome. The hotel ended up
being great, with free parking and fairly central to everything, and also included breakfast. I checked out
the pool and hot tub and weight room but didn't get a chance to use them, but I'll be keeping an eye on
this hotel to see if more deals pop up - they were under renovation at the time, so that might have been
why it was so cheap, but that didn't effect our stay at all. The room was a bit crowded with all the stuff
in there, but it had a mini kitchen and a full sized fridge that was useful for storing the drinks and
snacks we stopped at the nearby Kroger to pick up.
Saturday December 14, 2013
We tried a nearby bakery/cafe for breakfast first, but the place looked
packed and I asked if we could go back to the Radial Cafe for breakfast again. Done and
done. :-) Tea and their veggie hash were perfect for a day of messy
weather. We decided to postpone the hiking to Sunday since my flight was
leaving late enough, and do some indoor stuff instead. First up was the The Fernbank Museum of Natural
History where they had a Marco Polo exhibit. I'd loved their Ghengis
Khan exhibit last year, but this one felt like they'd reused some
artefacts and skimped on the supporting text. It's always nice to visit
the huge dinosaur skeletons though.
Checking the movie listings, we just had time to catch an early-ish
showing of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" at Atlantic Station. I'd
half hoped to grab tickets for a later show and get dinner first, but the
movie kept me rapt and unconscious of any hunger pangs. It was *long*
though and as soon as the credits started to roll, I was ready for
dinner.
We went to Chai Pani for dinner,
near Decatur Sq. I had a delicious cocktail that I tried to recreate at
home a few days later, the Earl grey fizz: earl grey and hibiscus infused
gin (Uncle Val's, a bottle of which I'd just recently purchased for my
home bar), cherry heering, cardamom honey syrup, lime, egg, cream. So so
good. The sag paneer was good as well, though Punjabi Dhaba in Inman Sq
still owns my stomach. :-)
Sunday December 15, 2013
We were determined to hike today, so we were up early enough to take
advantage of the hotel breakfast. I assembled a healthy repast from the
options on offer (fruit, an egg omelet on toast, a bit of cottage cheese
and my own tea). We got the car loaded up with wet and cold weather gear
and were off to the East
Palisades hike. The dirt road to the trail head and parking lot was a
bit dicey, I seem to recall we had to pull way off to the side to let
another car pass out, and the pot holes were epic. It was really muddy and
a bit chilly too. Jay went back for another layer and I continued ambling
back toward the trail head. I'd voted for this hike over the other options
because there's a bamboo grove growing alongside the river. It was
magical. The hollow knocking of the green poles as the wind moved through
them was background music to the shifting shadows and rustling dried
leaves. Quite a few people had made this their destination as well,
including some inconsiderate dog walkers. We went on a bit to the end of
the out and back trail, climbing up some rock faces to get views of the
river, then turned back. When we hit the place where the printed out
map showed a fork back the way we came or a trail following the river, we
couldn't quite spot the latter one, but decided to go for it anyway (at
least this time we were adventuring inside the Atlanta city limits instead
of on the side of a mountain... well...). We quickly saw why the trail was
no longer in use, it clung to the rocky outcroppings along the rivers edge
and we had to do some sleuthing to figure out which way it turned - there
were a few boot and paw marks from other hikers but no clear blazes. We'd
often have one person stop at the current end of the discernable trail and
have the other explore a few options and kept making strenuous progress.
Turns out that we weren't as isolated as it seemed, once we got back on
the clear trail a guy caught up to us and said that he saw us and that it
looked like we were having fun. We were. :-) Probably took us close to an
hour to go that mile, but the loop back to the car on the easy trail was
super quick. We were out for 3 hours total, did about 4.5 miles. By the
time we got back to the car, my boots and lower pant legs were coated with
mud, it felt positively New Englandish. :-)
I was pretty hungry by then, despite packing some snacks (10 essentials!),
so we drove over to Doctor Bombay's Tea
House for lunch. It was pretty cramped in there, we were squeezed in
at a long table along one side of a narrow book filled room while behind
us another long table hosted a gothic lolita tea party group. :-) The tea
was good and the scones and sandwiches and sweets were filling. As we were
leaving, I finally got to meet (briefly) the "Devil's Panties" creator, as
well as a couple of other friends of Jay's, there for their own dress up
tea party. I felt a bit underdressed, and grubby, after going there
directly from hiking, but the rest of the clientele were also dressed
casually, so it wasn't a big deal. Poked around a bit in a quirky store on
the same block, but time was ticking away and my flight was
approaching.
Jay offered up his house so that I could change out of my hiking clothes
and repack my poles into the bottom of my suitcase, so we headed there
first. The scrambling along the unmarked trail had left me a bit sweaty as
well as muddy, it was nice to change back into my clean travel clothes. A
quick drive to the airport and I was there in plenty of time for my 7:15pm
flight back to Boston. Which was good, because the TSA were extra clueless
this time around. I wanted to opt out of the scanner, but there was no
passenger pass through that didn't go through it, so one woman said I had
to go around to the metal detector line and tell her I wanted to opt out.
She got snippy saying that I couldn't opt out of the metal detector, and
when I said no, I was sent here, she said that if I hadn't said anything
I could have just walked through w/o the pat down. *sigh* Eventually they
figured out what they were doing and I got out of there, wanting a drink.
There wasn't a bar in Terminal A, I walked there from the main terminal,
skipping the short train ride in lieu of a calming walk. I think there was
also a gate change, I grabbed a now also traditional pomegranate vanilla
chai from Caribou Coffee in lieu of alcohol. They had the reading lights
turned off by mistake on take off and there was a tantrumy child in front
of me - I kept my noise cancelling headphones on as long as possible, even
into BOS.
My suitcase came out fairly quickly, but just in time for me to watch the
Silver line bus pull away once I got outside. Luckily the next one was
soon and it got me to the Red line easily enough. I decided, that since I
had to change to a bus at Davis Sq anyway, I'd stop there and drop in on a
friend's Scotch and socks birthday party. Of course this was discounting
the recent snow storm and how hard it would be to pull my rolly suitcase
through the mounds of snow, but I made it, had a drink, a few chats, and
got an offer of a ride home.
Back to my diary page.