Hanging out in Atlanta the past week

My apologies for the lack of posts this past week. I spent 5 days in Atlanta, GA for work. Needless to say, it was a busy work week and I didn’t have enough time to write up any posts or work out. I still plan on reviewing some gear that I recently picked up including a Garmin 305 forerunner and Nikon D90 with 50mm and 18-200mm lenses. One thing that I have forgotten since I have not done nearly that much business travel this year is how much travel for business seems to drain my energy level.

It had been about 17 years since I had last been in the city of Atlanta. The first thing I noticed is heat and humidity of the city. When I last visited, I remember it being late spring or early summer and the weather being pretty mild – not so in the summer time. Coming from Minnesota where the summer has been very very mild, I have to say the difference in weather was noticeable. I can finally understand why they call the city “Hotlanta”.

While I was staying in the suburb of Norcross, I still made it to the Atlanta Mid-town area. My evening in Midtown started by visiting an Atlanta institution, The Varsity! I went to original downtown location which claims to be the world’s largest drive-in restaurant. I vaguely remember visiting over 17 years ago and not much has changed. I ordered a #2 which is chili cheese dog and chili cheese burger with fries. Even though it was slightly unhealthy, it was really good.

After eating an early dinner at The Varsity, I drove a few blocks and found a parking lot in the Midtown area. It was now time to find a local watering hole. I walked past the Fox Theater and noticed the a show going on. Walking against the crowd heading towards the Fox Theater, my friends and I found a brewery near the theater. We had a drink there and decided we wanted to find something that was more of a bar and less of a restaurant. We asked for suggestions from our waitress who directed us to a bar named the Twisted Taco.

About a block away from the Twisted Taco, we noticed what looked like an Irish pub called Ri Ra. Ri Ra seemed busy for a Wednesday night so we decided to check it out. Once we entered Ri Ra, we settled into a place in the bar taking in the live music, enjoying our beverages, and meeting people hanging out in the pub. It turns out we never made it to Twisted Taco staying at the pub instead.

Another thing I enjoyed while was a trip to the Waffle house. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day and because Waffle house seems like another ubiquitous restaurant found in the Atlanta area, it seemed like a no brainer to go check it out. I was not disappointed by what I had – enjoying a regular waffle with 2 scrambled eggs and some grits.

One of the other treats of the week was enjoying having some draft yeungling during the week. Yeungling is my favorite beer, but is not available in outside of the eastern U.S. (Note to any bars in Minneapolis: What does it take to get Yeungling in the Minneapolis area?). It was definitely nice to be able to drink yeungling both on tap and in the bottle. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t get the it here because I would probably enjoy it way too often.

The trip to Atlanta was successful both from a work and personal perspective. I am glad to be back in Minneapolis to enjoy the cooler summer weather and get back into a routine of fitness, blogging, learning Mandarin, and relaxing.

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Tags: perspective, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Travel, regular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.