I'd gotten a glimpse of Georgia's capital and largest city back in 2021, arriving by bus at night, desperately looking for dinner downtown, and flying out the next morning. I wasn't impressed; I was walking around downtown looking for someplace to eat and frustratedly found everything closed down. Considering this is one of the largest cities in the country, I found this really disappointing, especially since I'd just visited Savannah and Charleston. But I knew there must be much more that I wasn't seeing and that it deserved a second look. This time, I was impressed.

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

The bus ride from Savannah totaled about four hours and was mostly uncomfortable. Every seat was packed and there wasn't much room to move. Since I didn't want to distract anyone with my overhead light shining, I decided not to read the book I brought and instead spent most of the time playing Angry Birds 2 on my phone.

The bus made only one stop, about halfway through the trip, in Macon. Even though it was nice to step outside and stretch my legs, the bus station there was closed, so anyone needing to use a bathroom before getting back on the bus was out of luck.

Two hours or so later, the bus stopped at Atlanta's airport, and I was so tired of buses, both intercity and public transit, that I decided here that I would only get around Atlanta on the subway, as sparse as I knew it was. If any of my planned destinations could only be reached by bus, like the CDC Museum, it would have to wait until next time.

Map of Atlanta's subway system. For such a huge city, in terms of land area and population, this is rather sparse. There are whole neighborhoods that this system doesn't even touch. But still, the area that it does serve, the system serves quite well. It efficiently connects the areas it does run through, and there are always plenty of people riding the trains, and that's much more than I could say about certain light rail and commuter trains in Dallas and Austin.

My hotel was the La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Atlanta Perimeter Medical, which is on the northern fringe of the city. I was outside the airport in College Park, a suburb just to the south of the city. The airport's subway station is served by both the Red and Gold Lines. But for some reason, the Red Line, which I needed to get to the hotel, was shut down for the night. So I had to ride the Gold Line several miles north to the Lenox station, where I ordered an Uber.

The first Uber canceled on me, right as he was driving by in his silver Corolla! WTF happened there?? So I ordered another one, and thankfully this one stopped for me and drove me to the hotel.

Thursday, November 2, 2023

I woke up feeling a little regret about having left Savannah so soon. After the uncomfortable four-hour bus ride and the Uber not stopping for me, I was starting to wonder if this trip to Atlanta was worth it. Thankfully, I'd quickly discover that day that it was.

The La Quinta where I was staying only had the "continental" breakfast, but I had some pistachios from a convenience store to fill it out.

Now, this hotel wasn't too conveniently close to any subway stations, and it took me the whole stay to figure out the most efficient way to get into the city from that hotel. This first morning, I didn't have it figured out yet. It took all of 25 minutes to walk from the hotel to the Dunwoody station, where I bought a subway day pass and boarded the Red Line train.

I stepped off the train in the Midtown station and walked up the escalator to the surface. Immediately, I saw that I had misjudged Atlanta two years earlier. This may have only been Midtown, but it felt like much more of a proper downtown than the actual downtown. This is where all the cool restaurants and such were. The first place I went to was Starbucks Reserve.

Ever heard of Starbucks Reserve? Starbucks may be a ubiquitous worldwide chain that serves coffee I only drink if there's nothing else available, but they also own a handful of upscale cafés in  a few big cities. There's one in New York City, which I missed during my 2021 visit, and there's naturally one in their hometown Seattle, which I visited in 2022. I didn't know there was one in Atlanta; I just happened to stumble upon it at that moment.

At a Starbucks Reserve, you'll find quite a variety of rare coffees available to drink, all flavorful single-origin coffees from all over the coffee-growing regions of Latin America, Africa, and southeast Asia. I got a Vietnam Da Lat. Even if you don't usually like Starbucks, if you like coffee you really should stop by a Starbucks Reserve if you have the chance. As of right now in August of 2024, there are only six, in Seattle, NYC, Chicago, Milan, Tokyo, and Shanghai. The one I visited in Atlanta is apparently no longer a Reserve and is just an ordinary Starbucks now.

A short walk from the Starbucks, I found the Fed Museum. This is a totally free-of-charge museum that you can walk through and learn all about the history and process of printing money. Only one drawback...you can't take pictures anywhere.

For lunch I stopped at Fadó Irish Pub, a kind of establishment I try to visit in every city I travel to. I had a pint of Harp Lager, and lunch was a Pear & Blue Cheese Salad with grilled chicken. Before leaving I had one more beer, a Stella Artois.

After lunch I went back to the subway station and rode either the Red or Gold south to the Five Points station in the middle of downtown. From there I walked to the state capitol building.

This is the Georgia state capitol. I've been on something of a mission to take a picture of all 50 US state capitol buildings since 2014 when I took a picture of the West Virginia capitol. This is my 15th. On this blog we've seen New Jersey (12) and Washington (14).

Atlanta has an aquarium I'd heard about, so I made this my next stop. I've been through aquariums before, like Monterey Bay, Baltimore, and Seattle, but this one was on a whole other level.

The Georgia Aquarium is split into several different wings, each of which you access from this huge shopping mall-like atrium.

Here's some of the more photogenic highlights...

Whale sharks

Puffins

In one space you can actually watch a show with trained seals. This was interesting, the people here have trained the seals to do things, like walk around and jump, in response to various hand signals.

I was in the aquarium for about two hours. I had to leave just before six in the evening since the place was about to close.

A short walk from the aquarium was Olympic Park. Back in 1996, Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympics, and there's a well-maintained bucolic park downtown to commemorate this.

The sides of all those slabs are covered with engravings of the names of everyone who won a medal in the 1996 Olympics.

The massive green space with Atlanta's skyline behind it.

Statue of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics. The first edition happened in 1896, and the Atlanta Olympics represented the centennial.

By now it was time for dinner, and I knew I wanted to go back to Midtown to find it. So it was back to the Five Points subway station where I rode a train north. Once in Midtown, I looked around for a good seafood restaurant and settled on the Steamhouse Lounge.

The Steamhouse Lounge really is a great place for seafood. For dinner I had a delicious, hot bowl of lobster bisque, along with a quinoa salad that included peppers, corn, tomato, cheese an onion. Also, I had a craft beer there, an Ironmonger Oktoberfest made in nearby Marietta; it wasn't bad but was somewhat bitter.

My last stop of the day was a bar down the street from Steamhouse, the 11th St. Pub. I still needed one more coffee, so considering the setting I got an Irish Coffee, the kind with whiskey and whip cream. Next I got one more Georgia beer, a Creature Comforts Classic City Lager made in the famous college town of Athens. This lager was smooth but bitter; seriously these American craft beers are overdoing the hops.

Not ready to leave yet, I had a couple of cocktails there: a whiskey sour and a Russian quaalude. That last one was something I'd never heard of before; apparently it's like a white Russian--vodka, Kahlúa, and half & half--with the additions of hazelnut liqueur, presumably Frangelico, and Irish cream. It was sweet and strong.

Getting back to the hotel was a little tricky, since the subway's Red Line, which I needed, was partially shut down, just like the night before, and only running between the stations on the far north of its route, which aren't served by the Gold Line. What I had to do was ride the Gold Line north to the Lenox station, spend too much time taking a long hike around the perimeter of an enormous shopping mall that was closed for the night, and then at the Buckhead station, the furthest south the Red Line was going that night, board a Red Line train and ride that north to Dunwoody. And THEN there was still a long hike through road construction to finally reach the hotel...only the next morning did I find out I was using the wrong subway station.

Friday, November 3, 2023

Breakfast at the hotel was cereal and pistachios again, this time with two oranges. Because I would be flying home that night, I packed up my luggage, checked out of the hotel, and as usual left my stuff with the people behind the desk in the lobby to be picked up later.

The day before, I'd been wasting time using the Dunwoody station as my link to the city center. It turns out that the next station to the north, Sandy Springs, was actually the more convenient one! Sure would've been nice to know that last night.

The Sandy Springs subway station. I'm still just a little amazed that this exists in a Sun Belt city.

Before doing anything else, I needed a new pair of shoes. Up to this point, I'd been wearing a pair of Vans I'd bought two years earlier at the Arundel Mills Mall in Maryland, during the two months I was staying there while taking trips to northeastern cities every weekend. Since then, those shoes had walked through so many cities and festivals all over the USA as well as that one week in Germany, and by now, after stepping on so many rocks in the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park, these shoes were about to fall apart. After last night's roundabout journey to the hotel, thanks to the Red Line's being partially shut down, I knew exactly where to find new shoes.

I rode the Red Line south to the Lindbergh Center station, and from there the Gold Line north to Lenox, where thanks to last night I knew there was a huge shopping mall. In the mall, after getting a coffee, I went to the Vans store and bought a pair of shoes which were more durable than what I had before.

With my shoes now updated, I didn't have any other plans for the day. I decided to check out the nearby city of Decatur, mostly just because I hadn't ridden the subway's Blue or Green Lines anywhere and they both served Decatur.

From the Five Points station in the middle of downtown, the one station where the four lines intersect, I rode the Blue Line east to Decatur. During the ride I did some research on my phone to find somewhere good to stop for lunch.

Stepping out of the subway station, I could see that Decatur may have been a suburb, but it didn't really feel like suburbia. Now this is a suburb done right: there's a subway station right in the middle, from which you can catch a train to the big city, and it's right next to a little downtown built around a county courthouse, with loads of stores, shops, bars, and restaurants within walking distance.

The DeKalb County courthouse in Decatur.

The restaurant I'd decided on was a seafood restaurant with a curious name, Cap't Loui. How did they think of that name, and how exactly is it pronounced? Does "Cap't" have one syllable or two, is it "capt" or "cappet"? The apostrophe suggests a contraction, but what could that be a contraction of?

Whatever the origin of the name, Cap't Loui is a great place for seafood. I had a tasty and juicy cod Po'boy, along with an alcohol-free piña colada mocktail.

Walking back to the subway station, I found one more place to stop on the courthouse square, O'Sullivan's Irish Pub. But I didn't drink anything Irish, instead I had two German beers, a König Ludwig Weißbier and a Warsteiner Oktoberfest. I think after all the overly-bitter craft brews I'd drunk the day before, I really just wanted something smooth and tasty.

I still had some time to do something before heading back to the hotel to reclaim my baggage. There is a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. in between Decatur and Five Points which I thought was worth a stop. After walking a few blocks, I first found, before the memorial, the house where Dr. King was born.

I think this was part of a walking tour which I didn't have time to do. There are signs around with QR codes to scan.

Eventually I made my way to the memorial itself. It consists of a long, blue reflecting pool, in the center of which is the tomb of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. It's ringed by a wall on which is engraved all of Dr. King's principles of nonviolence. There's also a bookstore. It was about to close for the day so I couldn't stay long.

I'll have to return the next time I'm in Atlanta.

On the way back to the subway station, I passed by Ebenezer Baptist Church. This is where MLK was a pastor in the 1960s. The current pastor is Raphael Warnock, who since 2021 has also been a US Senator.

With nothing left to do and no time left to do anything, I quickly walked back to the subway station and rode the Green Line back to Five Points, switched over to the Red Line, and took a long ride north to Sandy Springs. It was a little after 5:30 and my flight wasn't leaving until 9:05, so I wasn't too worried. But this was a massive international airport I'd be flying out of, so I wanted to be there about two hours before departure.

I got to Sandy Springs and briskly walked back to the hotel where I reclaimed my big rollaround suitcase. And then, knowing time was of the essence, walked even faster, about as fast as one could walk without running, back up the same street to Sandy Springs to catch a southbound train...

I was riding almost the entirety of the Red Line. Sandy Springs is only the second stop from the north end of the line, and the airport is the southernmost stop. The train steadily zoomed south as I watched the time steadily tick away.

But everything was alright, I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. But we're not done discussing this trip, because the timing of this flight is proof that while I may be great at choosing travel destinations, I'm horrible at actually planning trips. This flight lifted off at 9:05 at night in Atlanta, and landed at 10:30 in Albuquerque...but remember that's after gaining two hours due to crossing time zone boundaries. So when the plane landed at 10:30, to me it felt like 12:30, after midnight, thanks to my having spent a whole week in the Eastern time zone. I certainly didn't want to spend three and a half hours driving to Clovis, but that's what I had to do.

So I got a huge coffee from a convenience store on the east edge of Albuquerque and did my long drive in the middle of the night. The coffee kept me awake, and I drove a little faster than usual, a little too much over the speed limits, to get home as quickly as possible. And that last part is why, during the last leg of the trip between Fort Sumner and Clovis, I got pulled over by New Mexico State Police. Thankfully he just let me off with a warning.

So...I was really impressed by Atlanta. Once you realize that downtown isn't the center of everything. There's a lot to see all over the city, and you don't need a car to experience most of it. The transit system could use some work--how about another subway line or four?--but the subway was adequate enough for me. There's much I missed out on, and I'll be back at least once more.

Hulaween Trip 2023:

• Hulaween 2023, and Associated Bumbling Around Atlanta and Jacksonville
• Returning to Savannah in 2023
• My First Real Look at Atlanta