Photos
Sorry the photos are in completely random order! I couldn't find any way to organize them properly.
After me getting not much sleep last night, I finally got up and in the shower between 6am and 6:30am. Clay was still snoring away. I knew we had to be at the GA Aquarium at 9am for our timed entry tickets and if I finally went to sleep now, I wouldn't be awake until then. So, I got an early start. I made coffee and had it in the room while Clay got off to a slow start. I could have made hot tea in the room as well with the supplies provided and that most certainly would have helped Clay's head cold/sore throat but he wouldn't have any.
About 7:20am we went out looking for breakfast. There was a $15pp or so buffet on the 4th floor of our hotel, but we had a look and just weren't that hungry. We went on out through the lobby and across the street and 2 doors down found a Subway and a coffee/ice cream shop both open. So, Danish or breakfast sandwiches? I chose Subway. We picked our ingredients and got our garnished egg white omelet/English muffins to go. We took them back to the room and had them with our now chilled short souvenir Coca-Colas. Cleaned up the room, brushed our teeth again and headed out again to the GA Aquarium. Oh, I should mention here that Atlanta Segway Tours was only another couple of doors down. That would have been a cool thing to reserve if I had known about it. We picked up a brochure and the prices were about the same as in Raleigh.
There were self-service kiosks outside the
Georgia Aquarium. Since we were outside before they opened that would have been doable vs. ordering online in advance. But, with the huge crowds at everything we did in Atlanta (outside of the Cyclorama!) I would still be leery. If I had known that we would be there for half the day on Friday, and that it was going to be beautiful weather etc., we could have purchased an Atlanta City Pass or a combo ticket and saved some money, just FYI for future visitors. But, we just had $24.95pp general admission tickets. There are lots of other levels of visit to the GA that you can buy for behind the scenes tours, 3D movies, diving in the tanks, etc. We just wanted to look at our own pace from the public side of the tanks. Anyway, we got our tickets scanned and our photograph taken and then we got packed in the lobby to wait for the rope drop. Again, glad to have gotten in early and glad to be done and ready to leave by the time the crowds got unbearable. When we purchased online, I was given the option to download a free audio tour of the aquarium or could pay for one when we got there. I downloaded it. We tried to visit the aquarium using the audio tour, but it was scrambled and not flowing well through the building. Also, there were staffers everywhere with microphones giving all kinds of talks and information in each section and it was competing audio, so we gave that up. I am glad we didn't pay anything for an audio tour! But, just an FYI for future visitors, don't bother. Interacting with the staff is going to be much more rewarding. About the time we were ready to leave, Clay was ready for a drink. They had finally opened the cafe/snack bar area by now and he wanted to head over there. I convinced him to wait for lunch. So, after browsing the gift shop as exiting we headed uphill through Centennial Olympic Park to Googie Burger. We found a T-shirt on sale for Clay and a blown glass seahorse wine bottle stopper for me that matches our dinnerware.
To sum up, I guess the Georgia Aquarium was impressive! I guess I am just not an aquarium girl. I got motion sick waiting in the lobby to enter. We were surrounded by 2 schools of fish traveling by continuously. I had to sit down and take another meclizine and put on my sea bands before we got inside the aquarium proper. Once in there it was fine. The only other place I was iffy was on a moving sidewalk through and below the big main tank. So, it was a pretty amazing place, but just not my cup of tea. I am not sure what Clay thought of it. He seemed ready to leave before I was though. So, I guess he didn't love it either. I think the main problem was that although they gave us a big map of the place as we walked in, it did not have a schedule of events, feedings, etc. listed. You had to enter each area and view a monitor there to find out when and where their events were taking place and some times things were really nonevents. Anyway, between that and the scrambled audio tour, it made the visit more chaotic and disorganized than even the massive hordes did and we just didn't enjoy it that much.
Googie Burger wound up only about a block away at the Centennial Olympic Park Visitor's Center Building. It was walk up ordering, with a pick up window on the other side of the building and lots of tables and chairs around outside. It was such a beautiful day that it was a very pleasant way to have lunch. We both got our burgers without the special sauce, so all I can say is that we both liked our burgers. They were served on some kind of egg bread rolls. The french fries were better than The Varsity's but still not to our liking. The shakes were very, very thick and delicious. I had PB&J and Clay had peach. In case, like me, you are curious about the name Googie, it refers to the style of architecture of the building!
Clay wanted a nap now. I wanted to visit the
Atlanta Cyclorama before it closed at 4:30pm. I was not averse to a nap. We had checked the free HBO schedule in our room yesterday and the premiere of
Pee Wee's Playhouse on Broadway was airing tonight at 10pm. That was going to mean a late night for me after no sleep last night. We walked back to the Hilton Garden Inn to drop off our bag from the GA Aquarium and to look at a map before deciding naps or Cyclorama. When we got there around 2:30pm after being out since 8:30am, we found that it looked exactly as it had when we left it. Meaning with the fitted sheet off the 2 top corners! We did not spot any housekeeping carts in the vicinity. So, that decided it. We used the bathroom and headed out again.
It was only about a 15 minute drive to Grant Park which is where both the Zoo and the Cyclorama are located. We lucked into a free parking spot right in front of an entrance to the park and walked down. There were long lines at the zoo and we were worried about tomorrow looking at them. Po (Zoo Atlanta's new baby panda is on public display for 1 hour daily from 9:30am to 10:30am. The zoo opens at 9:30am! So, we did not want to be waiting in a ticket line tomorrow morning on our way to see Po before leaving town!) We decided to look again on our way back out of the park. We went into the Cyclorama and bought 2 adult tickets at $10 each. It turns out that while the museum part is self-guided, the Cyclorama part is timed groups! We arrived about 30 seconds after the movie started and they let us slip in to some empty seats down front. The film was about the Battle of Atlanta, which is the subject of the Cyclorama as well. After the film, they herded us together down a narrow hall and up a narrow flight of stairs to the Cyclorama Theater. It was awesome! There is a giant painting surrounding a giant round room, with about 15-20 feet of forced perspective diorama in front of the painting. The visitors are seated in steeply tiered stadium seating on a rotating platform! There is recorded narration, music, sound and lighting effects as you slowly turn to see the entire thing. When the recorded presentation was finished, a live narrator came in and turned us around once more with stops and starts as he shone a flashlight to point things out to us. We had about 5-10 minutes after that to walk around the seating area to look again at the whole thing. It was just amazing! The soldier figures ranged from just over 4 feet tall to just over 12 inches tall. You really had to look to tell about the foreshortening scale. We wandered the rest of the museum as the busload we had gotten mixed in with got rounded up and reloaded their bus. We realized that we had parked pretty far away in Grant Park from the attractions and made a mental note to find a different approach back tomorrow. But, the good news was that the way we had come we had finally seen a CVS with a surface parking lot that Clay needed to visit on the way back ASAP. When we came out the lines at the zoo were very short, so we got in line and waited to buy advance tickets to come back in the morning. We bought 2 adults tickets with our $3 off pp coupon from the Atlanta map we picked up yesterday on I-85. Our total was $38.86 and we got tickets valid until 09/18/2011. We'll be back tomorrow!
We drove back the way we came and stopped at the CVS and bought Clay more Benadryl since he didn't pack enough with him. He also bought a 2-liter Diet Coke since it was less that a .5 liter from the cooler. We have ice and a fridge back at the room. We were now both hot and sweaty and looking forward to a shower and a nap back at the room. Well, you might imagine that when we got back to the room after 4:30pm it had still not been serviced by housekeeping. We tried to phone the front desk to request it be serviced now, but no one ever answered the phone during a 15 minute period. We got out of there again and headed downstairs as 2 fairly unhappy campers. Clay stopped a maid with a cart as she exited a room about 12 doors down from ours. He asked her about getting our room serviced today, and when it might happen so we could schedule the remaining daylight hours... She pretty much snapped at him that she was doing what 1 woman could do and she'd get to it when she could. Now that was wrong, but I'm sure she was having a hard day and it was probably no more her fault than ours. But... a man in a green uniform with a walkie-talkie appeared out of the elevator lobby and overheard the last of the exchange. We heard him tell her as we left that she couldn't speak to us like that and to go clean our room immediately. Clay did tell her our number, he caught us before the elevator left and asked us our room number, apologized and said she would go clean it now. We headed on downstairs. I stood in line to register my complaint to management. Clay took a sofa in the lobby. It was hot and crowded and very noisy in there. They had a popcorn machine in there during the day. Clay got some the afternoon we arrived, other than that it sat with a few unpopped kernels in the bottom the rest of the time we saw it. I was bummed because I was hoping to score some popcorn to watch Pee Wee with later tonight. About cocktail hour, they take away the popcorn machine and replace it with peanut butter cookies. They are pretty good. But, there is something about the smell of popcorn that is addictive, and that's especially cruel when you can't have any! After about 15-20 minutes, it was my turn in line at the front desk. I drew a young woman from Kyrgyzstan. We had a bit of a language barrier. But, she did radio housekeeping and tell me while they were short staffed our room was being serviced now. No apologies for the inconvenience or ETA on when we could get back in the room. I mean if the woman up there had actually gone to our room when we left her, she should have been finished by now since we had been gone about 30 minutes at that point! The man working next to her was the one who checked us in yesterday and he must have been listening because he took me from her and we started again with what is the problem. He did apologize and acknowledged that we did not pay to come here and deal with the Hilton's staffing issues and the least he could do was offer us a cold beverage while we waited. Although he could not offer us a cold beverage in a cool, quiet space as I requested. He took us to the "Pantry" off the lobby. This is like a tiny convenience store where they sell snacks. We looked in here this morning hoping for microwave breakfasts, but there were none. Only microwave dinners. Anyway, during the course of the day, the coolers had been emptied out! He was happy to find a few bottles on ice in 2 rolling stand up display tubs since he had offered cold drinks. Clay got a juice (he had put his 2-liter Diet Coke in our fridge upstairs while we were up there) and I got another Coke. We sat on sofas in the lobby while we waited for the man to notify us that our room was ready. We got in there a little after 5pm. Clay had taken more Benadryl with his juice and he went directly to sleep. I was afraid if I went to sleep now, I would sleep til 10pm and we would miss going out for dinner. We had plans to go to
Mary Mac's Tea Room for dinner.
Clay slept until about 7pm when I rousted him to go now or never since Mary Mac's closes at 9pm. We got there during probably their busiest moment and their rear parking lot was full. We circled around and found a street spot with a $2 per hour meter on it. We did not have any quarters. We had to go in and put our name on the list and get 8 quarters and hope we would be back out in an hour. Clay ordered the full slab of ribs with collards and stewed okra and cracklin' bread. I ordered the vegetable plate. Only in the South! Gotta love it. I had macaroni & cheese, Brunswick stew, chicken dumplings (no chicken) and squash casserole. Now we know if we came back, Clay would only get the 1/2 rack. I would not get the mac & cheese or the squash casserole. I would get 1 fried chicken breast with the dumplings and maybe the Brunswick stew, or just the chicken and dumplings. I ordered the assorted breads which included the cracklin' as well as yeast rolls and cinnamon rolls. The cracklin' bread was small cornbread muffins with pieces of pork skin in them! Vegetarians should be very cautious in the South! Up front the the waitress brought us complimentary appetizers of
pot likker with cracklin' bread! This was listed on the menu at $2.25 for the cup size which is probably what she brought us. We were surprised. Clay ate mine! He liked it. He said it was very hot (heat) and made his head and throat feel better. Duh! Still not having any hot tea from the room setup though! For dessert, Clay ordered chocolate ice cream and I order peanut butter pie. The desserts were not too tasty and we wouldn't get them again. Clay had to get a take away box for half his slab of ribs! I think things might have gone better for us at Mary Mac's except that they seat you with a menu and an order form, pencils on the table. We didn't see a waitperson until she arrived to pick up our forms. So, you can't really ask questions to find out more about the menu or what you are ordering! Also, we had already caused enough trouble and delay when I refused the first table we were shown. Mary Mac's occupies what was originally at least 3 store front buildings along Ponce De Leon Avenue. Where the floors meet now in open space is not even. That table sat atop one of those joins and it was tilted at least 10-15 degrees off level. There was no way I could sit there without triggering vertigo and hurling, so I asked to be seated at a level table. Evidently those tables are in lesser supply and greater demand. Anyway, by the time all that had happened, we just filled out the forms by guessing about the answers to our questions and lived with the results. I got back to the car just as the meter was expiring. Clay arrived shortly after it expired and someone was waiting for me to pull out. Busy place!
Traffic was much lighter on the way back to the Hilton Garden Inn. That is until we reached the parking garage! For $18 per night, HGI offers self-parkers covered parking and the ability to come and go at will using your key card. But, not tonight. We drove all the way up to the 12th floor and uncovered parking before we found any vacant spots and we were clearly up there with the evening's celebrants as evidenced by the vomit against the driver's side the next morning! Another mark against HGI and downtown Atlanta in general is that when I was planning, I could not find any kind of general calendar of events. So, we could try to not be in the middle of something big. We learned on our walk through Olympic Park earlier in the day that the Atlanta Marathon was occurring on Sunday. Even as we transited the parking garage and hotel lobby the night before, we could find nothing about the timing or road closures.
Well, we watched the remainder of a Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan cop movie on HBO and I stayed up and laughed my way through Pee Wee. It was bittersweet. The NY audience was awesome in their participation and reactions. The show was very nearly a verbatim remake of Pee Wee's original HBO live show. They had to change some of the characters though as for example Phil Hartmann is dead and they did not reprise his character. And there was some updating, for example, the Playhouse being wired for Internet. I enjoyed it very much though. We slept better tonight, though the A/C was still overly noisy and the sheets kept popping off the top corners of the bed.
I'll end here and finish off the Atlanta trip with a new final entry.
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