Atlanta

Way back in 2013, we took a family trip to Atlanta. I loved it. 

Our long weekend started with a late arrival, and dinner at the hotel. We all went to our separate rooms to get settled and changed and planned to meet in the lobby for our 8:30 dinner. Everyone got there on time (because that’s what we do) except Grandma Judy. She was known for moving at a snail’s pace in general, because she always had SO much to do plus a couple cups of coffee and a newspaper, so we figured she’d make her way down soon. But she didn’t. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Eventually my dad called her room to figure out what was going on. Turns out she was having some shoulder pain (this was a regular thing for her) and she couldn’t maneuver her arm properly to get her jacket on. The jacket completed the outfit so naturally she could not be seen without wearing it, but she was so embarrassed that she couldn’t get it on herself that she just sat in her room. She did not notify us in any way that she was just sitting on her bed plotting ways to get her jacket on rather than joining us at dinner, and she did not call one of us for help because she had too much pride to ever ask for help (also she probably did not know how to contact a person via cell phone).

RIP grandma. We hope you’re still beating to your own drum.

Moving on – I guess this post is about Atlanta. If you want to read about grandma you can do it here.

After dinner we went to bed. The next morning we woke up for our electric car tour with Atlanta Cruzers. This was awesome. We rode around in cute little electric open door cars (or, according to my dads itinerary that I just found in my email, “cool cars that look like oversized golf carts”) and hit up a bunch of the major tourist spots in style, including the MLK Jr. National Site. We also got to see some hidden gems that we otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

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After our tour, we headed to our CNN Studio Tour. This was really cool, and definitely worth visiting if you’re in Atlanta. When I went to the Newseum in D.C. I actually remember feeling like I’d been there before, and I think it’s because it was pretty similar to the CNN studio tour. However, the major difference was that the Newseum was geared towards the news that we get each day, and the CNN studio tour was geared towards the behind the scenes work and how that news is made. I definitely recommend this.

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Next we went to Little 5 Points, a cute neighborhood to just walk around and explore, and we found this awesome smoothie and juice spot.

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Lunch was at Fox Brothers, Atlanta’s #1 BBQ joint.

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That afternoon, we did a tour of the Aquarium. I have pretty fond memories of this aquarium, and I don’t really know why. I just liked it a lot, and I’ve been to a lot of aquariums.

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The next morning we explored the Virginia Highland area. This was a cool area with shops and restaurants. I bought some jeans or something. Cute shopping and exploring spot. 

Then we went to the World of Coca-Cola for a tour. Don’t be fooled by these pictures. We look like we’re having fun, but we’re sort of not. I mean, it was fine. But for a company that has SO much money and SO much power, their tour was just incredibly lame. Do better Coca-Cola.

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If you’ve been following along (see Memphis), you’d know my family is weirdly into cemeteries. Don’t you just think it’s fascinating to see how long people lived and try to piece together how everyone is related if they’re buried next to each other, and how they died? And to see how old some of the headstones are? And just the headstones in general! Some are really cool – admit it, you’re into it.

Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta has a lot of history and some famous residents, so naturally we had to go. By the way, they have tours and school history lessons, so we’re not the only creepy people into cemeteries apparently. I honestly can’t find any of my pictures from the cemetery, but I swear I took some good ones.

After that, we went home, but this was not my only trip to Atlanta. A few months later, we did a roadtrip from Greensboro to Asheville, Knoxville, Charleston, and Savannah with a couple of little stops along the way (stay tuned). Atlanta was one of them. We actually stopped there for maybe an hour and we went to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. But we got there after five so it was closed, so we just took some pictures outside and got back in the car to head to our next stop. 

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In 2005 or so, I went to look at Emory with my mom when I was college shopping. I HATED it. If you want to know more about this feel free to text me, but I felt that they considered themselves a “city school” but they were actually nowhere near the city. When I said “where can i go for Advil?” the tour guide said “um….(insert too long of a pause here)…I think there’s a CVS down the hill.” I went to Penn and definitely considered GW a strong second choice, so I wanted a REAL city school. If Emory was in Atlanta, I would have loved it, because Atlanta is an awesome city and I definitely need to get back there someday.