Atlanta

I wanted to provid a rundown of a trip my friends and I took to Atlanta over Memorial Day Weekend, 2007.  The schedule has been updated to show exactly where we went and how much time we spent at each place.  At the end I'll also give a summary of how much we spent total for all of the attractions.   I hope you enjoy the pictures and find this helpful if you are traveling to Atlanta.  With that being said...

We left Maryland at about 5:30am and arrived at our Atlanta Hotel (Hilton Downtown) around 6:00pm, getting a good taste of Atlanta traffic as we were heading into the downtown area.  I still don't understand why the traffic was that bad going into the city on a Friday evening.  It appeared that the city has a pretty serious traffic problem.

We got a 4 day MARTA pass to get around and went to the Atlanta Underground Area to catch the shuttle to the Braves game at Turner Field.  The shuttles were very organized and got us to and from the game quickly.  The field was pretty nice and the crowd was good eventhough the Braves lost (first time I've heard the braves/seminoles/whoever chant live and in person) .  We got the 6$ cheap seats, which worked out fine.  Since the game was on a Friday night they showed Fireworks after which were actually pretty impressive.













After the game we took the shuttle back to downtown and caught a metro ride to the North Avenue Station and walked to the Varsity for a late-night meal.  It was 11:15 pm and the places was croweded with Braves fans and other people.  We got a chili burger and chili dog, which wasn't really anything spectacular, but it was good cheap food. However, the orange frozen shake I got was very good and recommended. 




























That was all we were able to do on the first day.  However, one thing I wanted to mention is that walking around the city you will get the full southern hospitality treatment from Atlanta's homeless...and there are a lot.  They'll try to ask if you need any help finding anything or they will give you some advice about parking or when certain attractions are open (and usually it's wrong, made-up information), and then they'll try to ask for some money after "helping" you so much.  Best thing to do is just say you don't need any help and keep on walking.  I've been to a lot of cities with a large homeless population, but Atlanta's seemed to be the least shy and most willing to walk after you and badger you.   I mean the minute you step out onto the open sidewalk it will take a matter of seconds before someone sees you and runs across the street or catches up with you to "help out."   At least that was our experience.  Just a warning that you may want to stay in hotel outside of downtown to avoid this.  That was probably the biggest negative I had with the city, and that's all I'll say about it.