To Atlanta and back!

Well after being 2 miles from the first tornado to ever hit Atlanta, 2 hour wait for our flight out of Atlanta, missed flight to Vegas from Phoenix, flying standby to Vegas and 2 attempts at landing in the windiest airport and being awake for 21 hours, I finally made it home. Here are the details of my week in Atlanta!

Sunday: Drove to Las Vegas and flew to Phoenix then to Atlanta. I was nervous as this was the first time I've flown in the past 2 years. Got to our hotel, The Marriott Suites Midtown! Very nice and expensive, good thing the mine was paying for it for my mom's course!

Monday: Figured out how to use the MARTA (Atlanta's train/transport system). Went to the Lennox mall and walked around for hours without buying too much! Shocking I know but this mall had expensive stores...no Walmart!! I did manage to get a pedicure though! Went for dinner with my mom and 2 of the women she's doing her course with to an expensive Italian restaurant, Vedi Vini Vichi. The food was soooo good as was the service.

Tuesday: Now familiar with the MARTA, I went to the Coca-Cola factory and the Georgia Aquarium. Both very cool places to tour. Even caught a movie, The Other Boelyn Girl. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment!

The Georgia Aquarium

Wednesday: Paid a small fortune to have a facial in the morning at the Four Seasons spa next door to our hotel. It was soooo relaxing and I loved it. Then I walked down the to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. It was nice but I think it would be more beautiful in later spring/summer. Not all the plants and flowers had bloomed but was still able to get some nice shots! Here are some of them.

I also wanted to go check out this place called Underground Atlanta which was quite the train ride but felt confident so I ventured out. Got there and was very disappointed. It smelt like pee and just had kiosks/carts for shopping so I went back to the hotel. On my way back on the train, a guy plopped down next to me and had 2 knives/lighters and asked if I wanted to buy them. I said no thanks!! I was super scared and nervous as he was trying to get 2 other guys next to me to buy them and opened up his duffel bag to show them defected ones and it was full of knives. Luckily my stop was next so I got off as fast as I could, called Chris bawling!! This guy "seemed" nice enough but the fact that we had a bag full of knives and was whipping them out. The possibility of being killed or kidnapped was very real for me. Praise God that I am safe! I got back to my room and stayed there til my mom got back.Once my mom was done for the day, we went down to Atlantic Station which is a new development with condos, shopping, movie theater, bowling and restaurants all in an area. They call it a city within a city. So we did some shopping and had dinner at a great place called the Copeland Cheesecake Bistro! So good and tried some southern cuisine.

Thursday: I was a little more hesitant to go out today and tired but in the afternoon I ventured to check out the Martin Luther King Jr. museum. That was alright. Not too much to see but watched a short movie on his life. Had to walk a ways from the MARTA station and was really nervous as this was a little ghetto-ish!!

Went for dinner at Gladys (as in Knight at the Pips) and Ron's Chicken and Waffles and had exactly that! With fried green tomatoes for an appetizer, peach cobbler for dessert and brought back sweet potato cheesecake which I enjoyed for breakfast the next day in bed! It was a good thing I was doing a lot of walking with all the eating we were doing!

Friday: My last day in Atlanta and mom was only doing her course til noon so I hing around the hotel til she was done. I wanted to see the Olympic Park thinking this was some sort of museum but was just that....a park. Without knowing this, I grab my mom and we head out on the MARTA, get directions in the wrong direction to where it was, started to rain and get to the park and say "that's it?". So I took her back to the Coca-Cola factory. I liked it and didn't mind going again and she got to see some of what I did.

Later that night, it continued to rain and turned into a storm. Around 9:30pm, we were watching tv and a tornado warning comes on. And we looked out our window and the rain was pouring like crazy and the wind was blowing it around like it was nothing. So a tornado did touch down but we weren't personally affected til it came to fly out the next day! Praising God again that we weren't hurt!

Saturday: Had to get up at 5am GA time (2am NV time) to catch our flight at 7:40am. We left at 9:30am. This was a 4 hour flight and had a connection in Phoenix to Vegas at 9am (NV time) so we missed that one. We were given another flight to Vegas at 3:15 but there was an earlier one so we got on the stand-by list and were lucky to get on that flight. So we were finally on our way home. Once we got to Vegas, we were almost on the ground and the pilot pulled us back p to make another pass. He then informed us that there was another plane on the runway...eek. So after another pass, were on the ground, thank God!! After a trip to Walmart we were on our way home. I am so glad to be home and to see my hubby and girls whom I missed deeply. I did enjoy my trip away and was glad to get some much needed relaxing in.