Atlanta with Chrissy and Allison 2014

We went to Atlanta! Chrissy has been nursing Owen back to health since April 2013, so she was overdue for some relaxation and girl bonding time. Coordinating was a little tricky but Allison, Chrissy, and I could all get a direct flight to Atlanta, so off we went!

Allison, me, and Chrissy- together!

We decided to stay in the Buckhead area close to our hotel to make the best use of our 36 hours together. Allison and Chrissy arrived before I did on Friday so they had dinner at Cook Hall and drink on the patio, and when I got in we had drinks in the W's lobby, affectionately called "The Living Room." We were off to a good start. 

First order of business the next morning was sleeping in late. This was super exciting for me, and I suspect for Chrissy too since she also has two kids. Allison was an angel and kept quiet for as long as she could handle and then ran out to get us coffee and breakfast goodies. Also, we had to Facetime with all our husbands and kids before we got going, which was actually pretty fun as we crossed over into each other's conversations and Allison and I got to see Owen, Hailey, Jason, and Dan, and vice versa with all our families.

So we missed brunch where we were going to go, it was late and the place was overrun with football fans. But we did a little walking tour of Buckhead and a local Uber cab driver recommended a place to us. It turned out to be one of the best tapas place in Atlanta, Eclipse di Luna, and the music was all Cuban salsa. We were beyond pleased.

Allison and Chrissy with a Palm Tree hat at Eclipse di Luna

Somehow we ended up at the mall which was not the original plan, but it kept us out of the rain. Allison and Chrissy had big frozen yogurts and I saw my first ever cupcake ATM. I almost took a picture of it, but it's one of those things... it looked like a pink ATM, the picture wouldn't do justice to the genius of the idea.

It was time for more lazing about. We went to check out the hotel pool, but the people there were all quiet and intense, and we're loud and relaxed so we passed. We sort of nap-rested, which was necessary after sleeping in(!) and then got ready for dinner.

Buckhead Diner- Actually an upscale restaurant

We had dinner at the Buckhead Diner which does look a diner from the outside- and how appropropriate to our Jersey roots!- but is actually an upscale restaurant on the inside. Apparently, celebrities are seen there all the time, but we didn't see any. So we pretended with the celebrity photo wall. And we had lots of delicious food and drinks.

Chrissy, Billy Crystal, and me

We walked to and from dinner, so I'm sure we burned off all the calories from dinner and our after party. Right? We went to Whiskey Blue which ended up being kind of clubby bar with nice views of Atlanta on its porch. We even made some friends. Then it was back to Cook Hall so we could sit on the patio and have loud inappropriate conversations by ourselves. Definitely some quality bonding! Time to plan our 2015 getaway!

Porch at Whiskey Blue Bar- tried and failed to get Atlanta's skyline in the picture

Happy birthday, Chrissy!

• Last visit with Chrissy, August 2014
• Last visit with Allison, June 2014
• Last visit to Atlanta, May 2012 family roadtrip!

SE Roadtrip Day 8: Savannah, GA 2012

Savannah, Georgia is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. She's romantic, clean, polite, and charming at every turn.  It's easy to fall for her, especially if you start in Forsyth Park, with it's lush greenery and Spanish moss. We started there and let James run around the playground for a while before we tortured him with tons of photos in front of the Forsyth fountain.

Clous in front of the Forsyth Fountain

Forsyth Park

Thanks a lot, boys. (In front of the Confederate Memorial.)

Then we took a very long leisurely walk through different squares in the city, which are really more like small parks than European-style squares.  I think there are 21 total in Savannah, and we went through about 6-9 of them.

Another method of travelling around Savannah

We plotted our course to lead us to Walls BBQ, which is basically a BBQ shack in the middle of nowhere that's received high praise from the New York Times.  This was our 4th BBQ of the trip (!) and it did not disappoint at all.  The pork sandwich sauce tasted a bit more like tomato sauce and mustard than a more traditional southern BBQ flavor, but it was juicy, meaty, and delicious. We also got a yummy side of okra and tomatoes, so we could expand our range of BBQ cuisine and get some vegetables into our bodies.

James can be bought for some burger bun and okra

Outside of Walls, happy from all the yummy BBQ

On our way out of Savannah, we hit a vaguely collegy-hipsterish coffee shop, leading us to believe that the hipsters have a serious foothold in the South. The Sentient Bean had a yummy coffee that had some licorice-like flavor to it. Good parks, good BBQ, and good coffee-- we're sold on Savannah.

SE Roadtrip Day 6: Macon, GA 2012

We didn't plan on going to Macon, Georgia, but our next planned stop Jacksonville, Florida is 5.5 hours from Atlanta, so that meant either waiting until James was close to bedtime and getting to Jacksonville really late, or going part of the way during his second nap of the day.  Macon seemed like a logical choice because we'd heard of Macon before and it was clearly on the way.  The next issue was what to do in Macon.  We were in luck. Macon is home to the Ocmulgee National Monument, home of the "earthworks" of Native Americans who lived in the area more than a 1000 years ago.

Me in front of the Ocmulgee burial mound

Believe it or not, this is not my first mound visit. In 2009, my parents and I traveled to Miamisburg, Ohio on a super intense 20-hour roadtrip of our on to try on my wedding dress at the designer's shop with no other stops or sights.  Between fittings we went to the Miamisburg Mound and my dad and I climbed to the top.  I had already been thinking of that trip because we'll be going to Ohio for my second time on this trip, but coming across my second mound was a surprise. 

But this site has a whole series of mounds, and includes an "Earth Lodge" you can enter and listen to a recording explaining what the Native Americans did there.  So we did that, and after letting James run around outside for a few minutes, we were ready to go.

Kevin about to duck into the Ocmulgee Earth Lodge

Ocmulgee Earth Lodge

James favorite part of the day is anytime he gets to run around outside

So we head into Downtown Macon to grab dinner and kill some time. Macon was pretty dead for a Wednesday after work. The town looks nice enough, with cheerful pink flowers spray-painted on the corners and cute little shops, but lots of the stores looked like they had gone out of business a while ago.  We picked a sandwich and coffee shop from Yelp, and it was great.   Roasted Cafe and Lounge turned out to be a hipster coffee shop which was very odd for us to find in Macon, but the people were nice, the coffee was good, and there was free WiFi.  We got delicious vegetarian sandwiches because we were still in a bit of a meat coma from the BBQ we ate in Atlanta for lunch.  All in all, Macon worked out pretty well for us so it earned a blog post.

Downtown Macon

Hipster coffee shop in Macon, Roasted Cafe and Lounge

Bonus cute photo of James in Macon

SE Roadtrip Days 5-6: Atlanta, GA 2012

Group shot in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, GA

One thing we have learned immediately on this roadtrip is that you can take in much fewer sights with a baby, and Monday night I saw Christina's Facebook message that our motto should be "Survive!" so we paced ourselves on the first day in Atlanta.

We took recommendations on where to go, and everyone agreed we should try Varsity, a drive-in chili hot dog place.  The chili hotdogs were okay (a little small), but the place itself was awesome. They gave James a server's hat that we put to good use.

Varsity for chili hotdogs

Varsity hat for James

Beyond food, people we asked had no consensus on what we should do in Atlanta. The top guidebook recommendations are the Aquarium, Coca-Cola World and Centennial Park, but the Aquarium is prohibitively expensive if we're going to make it almost 3 weeks on the road, and we couldn't stomach paying to be advertised soda in 4-D.  We put Centennial Park on the list, but left it for day 2.

So we started at the Martin Luther King National Historic site in the Auburn section of Atlanta. The visitors center is a pretty small but interesting museum, and you can also go see MLK's grave at the Center for Nonviolence, his childhood home, and Ebenezer Baptist Church in the immediate area.  I thought the most moving part of the exhibit was seeing the very modest wagon that his coffin was carried in when he died. I've seen Presidential funeral processions in D.C., and the comparative modesty for a man who was a national hero is sad.

Outside the MLK visitor center

A civil rights march exhibit where you can join the march

The MLK Memorial at the Center for Nonviolence

Then we head over to Piedmont Park which James loved because the Active Oval had a huge section of grass he could run in without hurting himself.  After we saw how happy this made him we tried to fit in a park during as many days of our trip as we could. We liked it too because Piedmont Park is really beautiful with the city skyline overlooking lush green fields.  And that was it for me and James for the day. Kevin really wanted to see an Atlanta Braves game and see the stadium.  It was a night game and we don't think James is stadium-friendly even if it were a daytime game so James and I stayed behind while Kevin checked it out.

<

James gives Piedmont Park his vote

The Atlanta Braves

For Day 2, we started with the more touristy Centennial Park, designed as the Olympics town square during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, but now more well-known for the terrorist bombing that took place there during the Olympics.  It was nice, but it wasn't as good for James to run around in, and apparently that's how we judge parks now.

James, stroller-bound in Centennial Park

Afterwards, we went for lunch at Fat Matt's Rib Shack, and wow, did that make our day.  We had the most terrific BBQ of our lives. Delicious! And everyone who worked there was really nice to us and asked us a bunch of questions about James. 

At Fat Matt's (notice James is about to steal my sandwich)

After lunch, we got one more site in-- the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum. The guide books aren't big on this museum, but I'm a big fan of President Carter.  I think he really stuck to his ideals in Washington, even if it turns out that it doesn't work-- I think he was our one "Mr. Smith" president. More importantly, the work he's done through the Carter Center after leaving the presidency has been really impressive. Anyway, I enjoyed the museum a lot because I'm a fan, and James enjoyed the museum because it wasn't crowded at all and it was largely child-proof and he got to run around.

Jimmy Carter museum Oval Office recreation