Hotlanta

If you aren’t friends with me on Facebook or just didn’t happen to see my post from two weekends ago, let me say again… if I had a bucket list, visiting Turner Field would be on it and now it would be checked off. That’s right, we went to Atlanta and saw the Braves play at home. I have been a Braves fan (or specifically a Chipper Jones fan) for years. I have seen them play before around the Midwest and watched their games on TBS while they use to be on all the time, but had never actually been to Atlanta. When I heard Chipper Jones planned to retire after this year I knew we had to make a trip to watch him one last time. Plus we live only about 4 hours from Atlanta now so it seemed meant to be. Unfortunately Chipper Jones had the night off and didn’t play… but we still got to enjoy the stadium and game. I take that back, we didn’t enjoy the game much because the Braves lost 5-0. Ok, I’m done with my complaining, we really did have a fun time! Let me tell you more about our weekend…  

Neither Joe or I had ever been to Georgia prior to this trip. Just another state we’ve marked off the list. We definitely live in a part of the country that neither of us are familiar with so we have lots of locations on our list to visit. Joe’s finger wanted to be in the picture, shame on it.

We booked a room at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis which is a huge and pretty impressive hotel. We stayed on the 38^th floor of the 40 some floor hotel. The first (and honestly second) elevator ride up and down was a shock to my gut. I don’t do roller coasters and do not like that feeling of motion. We had some great views from our room during the day…

And at night…

The inside of the hotel had a huge open atrium that bowed out towards the ground. It was pretty trippy looking up from the bottom or looking down from the 38^th floor.

We met up with one of Joe’s classmate from San Francisco. It was so great to see Steve again. We had lunch at Atlanta’s #1 BBQ place called Fox Brother’s. Unfortunately there was a weird reflection in this picture and their faces are lit up. Steve introduced us to Brunswick stew… which was delicious.

Then Steve took us to a brewery that was a hidden gem. Well, I can’t say it was that hidden, the line to get in was very long. The idea of their “tour” was a gem though. For $10 you got a glass with the breweries logo on it plus 6 drink tickets. Each ticket got you about a half glass of their beer to taste. They did actually have a tour of the facilities, but most people weren’t there to learn how beer was made… I think most people there were well versed in beer drinking.

Anyways, they have these events every Saturday for only 2 hours. In other words you have to really drink up to use all 6 drink tickets. There was no way I was going to down that much beer in 2 hours so I gave my extra tickets to Steve to use in the future. Most people at the brewery were also likely going to the baseball game afterwards. Lots of people had Braves gear on. We both sported our Braves t-shirts. I bought Joe’s shirt for him when I went to spring training in Florida.

Just like the title of this post, it was pretty hot in Atlanta (which is where we get Hotlanta). We purposefully bought tickets to a night game because of the heat down south. Turns out Saturday was below normal, but still warm enough to stay in the shade when necessary. We arrived at Turner Field in time to watch batting practice.

We didn't catch any fly balls, but came close to a few.

Like I said, the game turned out to be a bummer. Atlanta lost and only had one hit the entire night. Oh, and did I mention Chipper didn't play?

What a great weekend!