Atlanta

Fishy and I are in Atlanta for vacation.

First of all. Atlanta: gayest city I have ever been to in my life. And I've been to some pretty gay cities. I swear, everyone here is gay. Even Fishy, who always compl

We got here Wednesday night after some thunderstorms delayed our flights.

Thursday for lunch we drove to the Little Five Points area. We ended up eating at a place called "Savage Pizza." We decided to split a 12" pizza, which was NOT enough food, but we figured we could always get a snack later in the day, which we did. It's decorated with all sorts of comic book related art, action figures hanging from the ceiling, paintings of comic book covers, and the bathroom is literally wallpapered with pages from various comic books. All-in-all, a very satisfying decorating scheme. We walked around that area for a while after lunch. There are several cool stores there, and they have a really nice little natural foods store called something like "Sevananda," where Fishy bought some tasty vegan blueberry crisp for us to share.

Savage Pizza in Little Five Points

After we left that part of town, I was dying for some caffeine, so we went to this nice little gay bookstore/coffeeshop I'd read about on the web called Outwrite, on Piedmont Ave. (It was there that we saw our first Asian in Atlanta. How ironic is it that the first Asian person we see here is also gay??) Anyway, I had a coffee and Fishy & I split a piece of Chocolate Raspberry Cake. Fishy mostly just liked the frosting and left the rest for me.

Outwrite Bookstore

After coffee, we walked around a bit to see what else was in the area. We came across Piedmont Park and went in. It's absolutely beautiful. Although that was mitigated somewhat when we saw this woman take her dog over to a water fountain, and let it not only drink from the fountain, but slobber all over it and lick it everywhere with its big ugly wet dog tongue. Fishy stood motionless for a moment, in shock at what we had just seen, and then said, "I *WAS* going to get some water from that fountain." WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE THINKING?!!! She then proceeded to let her monster-sized dog run free as she passed a sign that said "Leashes Required For All Dogs." (This is the problem with dog people. They think these things are completely acceptable. Cat people would never be so rude.) I wish I had her name to print here plus a better shot of her face so that everyone knows what a bitch she is. "A bitch with a bitch," we joked.

The rude bitch who let her dog slobber all over the water fountain

As we walked through the park, I took some photos that I hope to turn into panoramas. We'll see how they turn out. It's a very peaceful park, with not many people (at least during the workday on a Thursday). At one point, we came across the Atlanta Botanical Garden. They had these really cool, colorful scuptures inside that had caught our eye through the gate, so we walked around (there was a lot of walking today) to the entrance and decided to go in. Despite our initial hesitation at the $12 entrance fee, it turned out to be totally worth it, (even for Fishy, who as you all know is a cheap bastard) and we spent the bulk of our day there. The Niki de Saint Phalle outdoor sculpture exhibit is the largest ever of its kind, apparently, and they brought the sculptures in from all over the world, including the 8-ton La Cabeza from San Diego. (It was this huge, colorful skull. And you could even go inside it, which was lined with mirrors, and look out at the garden through the teeth.) The grounds are quite large, and include a small Japanese garden, a frog pond, green house, orchid house, aquatic plant pond, rock garden, a small woods, a children's garden, and more. I used up almost half of the memory card on my D70 there (I love taking photos. Have I mentioned that?), and we still have 2 more days left in this trip! Fishy took a bunch of photos, too, but wasn't very happy with how a lot of them turned out, unfortunately. I wish he'd buy a Digital Rebel like he's wanted for so long. He'd enjoy it so much. Right now he has a very tiny little camera that literally fits inside an altoids tin. It's great for basic photos, but when you start wanting high quality photos in low-light, it just doesn't do as well as he'd like. And it's not like you can jack up the ISO on camera like that.

Atlanta Botanical Garden

Fishy bought some really pretty stones at the gift shop for his mom for Mother's Day. Even I was surprised at how inexpensive they were. In Philly, they would have cost a dollar or two a stone. But he ended up getting like 20 for $5. He's never been one to turn down a bargain, after all. :)

For dinner we went to Atlanta Underground. Or is it Underground Atlanta? Anyway, we were remarkably unimpressed. I told Fishy, "I have never seen a more touristy place in my life." He replied with two words: "Fisherman's Wharf." I stood corrected. Anyway, we ate at one of those asian places in the foodcourt that sells bourbon chicken. The place as a whole reminded us both a lot of the Gallery mall in Philly (that's not a compliment), with mostly low-end stores selling cheap things, and lots of those carts that sell things like mugs with your child's photo on them. The high point of our underground experience was that I was able to get Fishy two of those pressed pennies he collects, the kind where you put two quarters an a penny into a machine and turn a crank and your penny comes out flattened with a design on it. I always get them for Fishy when i can.

Atlanta Underground

We got back to our room around 9pm and never went out again. To tired, and not really in the mood for a gay bar, despite the bathing suit contest going on at the Compound. So we watched Keith Olbermann on MSNBC til 1am and then went to sleep.

Friday, May 12.

I had breakfast while Fishy remained in bed. I was *SO* tempted to get the buffet, except for Fishy's warning as I'd left our hotel room: "NO OMELETTES!" So i got only an English muffin, a coffee, and then an OJ for Fishy. And still he sighed when he found out. Sigh... (See, Fishy?!! I can sigh too!!) I sat in the booth at the hotel restaurant surfing the web and checking my email as I drank my coffee. I overheard one of the waitresses saying, "I gotta get me one of those laptops too!"

The Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium was the one vital part of this trip. If we did nothing else in Atlanta, we were going to be sure to make it to the Aquarium. When we got there, though, the lines were outrageous. If you go, be SURE to buy your tickets ahead of time. Tickets are sold for a certain time of day, and they sell out because they're still so new and popular, so get them online. We got there at 12:45 and had to wait until 2pm until we could get in. Fishy was clearly frustrated by it all, and I felt really bad for him. But time flew pretty quickly (in hindsight, at least, and we kept Fishy's blood sugar ramped up with half of a chicken pesto sandwich we'd sneaked past the guards, so that kept him less grumpy than usual.)

The aquarium was pretty great, but extremely crowded, mostly with small annoying children. They need to have "adult swim" hour or something for people who don't want hoardes of unruly school children surrounding them like gnats on a humid summer evening in a swamp. But I digress.... We were really impressed with the fish. Our favorite was the Ocean Voyage, which has this HUMONGOUS tank that contains thousands of fish, several schools of manta rays, and two very large whales, Ralph and Norton. We spent more time there than anywhere else in the aquarium complex. Second to the whales, my favorite part was the small-but-impressive jellyfish exhibit, and the leafy sea dragon, which must be seen to be fully appreciated. Oh, and they had another pressed penny machine, so I got Fishy 4 more pennies (aquarium-themed) for his collection.

The Georgia Aquarium

After we left the aquarium, on our walk back down Baker Street to the car, we came upon a 70-ish year old man, who saw my camera and started talking to us about taking pictures. Well, his english was OK, but he was still very confusing. We also weren't sure whether he was crazy, or just lonely and talkative, or what. From what we could make out, he was Polish, and had spent time in a concentration camp. He also seemed to be talking about a concentration camp right there in Atlanta, where Olympic Village was. And he talked a lot about the Jews. At first, we thought he was Jewish, but later he said that it was the Jews who'd put him in a concentration camp in Poland, but that he never knew why. He talked about how Hitler's original last name was Frankenberger and that he was Jewish, and how other Nazi officials were Jewish. Then he told us that President Clinton was actually Jewish. As I said, hard to tell. And something about a woman doctor at a nearby clinic who had previously been at the concentration camp. He seemed like a nice man, though, regardless of his other possible insane or anti-Semetic flaws. As Fishy said, it might have been that he saw two young(ish) people who hadn't lived through the "World War Second" like he had, and saw it as an opportunity to pass on his knowledge. He said that he'd written hundreds of pages about his story, and that now he'd add his conversation with us to his writings. If I'd been a little more sure that he wasn't potentially dangerous, I would have taken his picture, hoping that someone out there reading this might know more about him, because he was a very interesting person to listen to.

Next came East Atlanta. For our afternoon coffee, we went to Joe's Coffee House, where we arrived just in time before a huge crowd showed up. I got a coffee/chocolate frappe and Fishy got a raspberry italian soda. We split a piece of German chocolate cake. We walked around the area for a bit (small, but nice) before getting back into the car.

Joe's East Atlanta Coffee Shop

As we drove, we passed Emory, where Fishy's sister is graduating from on Monday. Since it's not likely we'd be in town again anytime soon, we decided to walk around campus a bit. I'd been hoping to find a nice view of campus I could make a nice panoramic photo of, but everything is so closed-in that it was almost impossible to find what I was looking for, so i gave up and we went back to the car, but we had a very nice walk around campus.

Next stop: the Atlanta Leather Company. We've been to a lot of leather stores/sex shops/erotic boutiques/whatever, but we were pretty impressed with this one. I mean, it's no Mr. S. Leather, but then nothing is, right? We got there just a few minutes before it closed, but it's not like we were going to buy anything there. The two guys working there were really friendly, and took time to show us all the cool stuff they had.

After ALC, we drove around the Buckhead area, but it was fairly late in the day by that point, and the only thing that was still open was bars and clubs and restaurants, so we drove for a bit, until we ended up at Lenox Square Mall, which was closing in 30 minutes. They had an Apple Store, and I was hoping they'd have a Mac-compatible compact flash card reader so i could backup my photos to my laptop, but no luck. We had dinner at the food court there. Taco Bell and Cinnabon (classy, eh?) I haven't had cinnabon in years (because Fishy usually doesn't let me get it anymore.) It was *good* but not *great* as Homer would say. The restrooms in the foodcourt area were out of order, so we had to trek across to the other side of the mall to pee. By the time we got back, Bloomingdales had closed their mall entrance, so we couldn't get back to where we'd parked. We found another exit and wandered for 20 minutes until we finally found our car.

Krispy Kreme. Earlier in the day, we'd driven by a Krispy Kreme. It was one of those big 24-hour ones, that clearly makes its own donuts fresh all the time, so we decided to go back for dessert that nite. I mean really, is there ANYTHING tastier than a fresh, hot Krispy Kreme donut??? (The answer is no.)

Krispy Kreme

Saturday

The day started with lunch. We ate at a place called Joli Kobe Bakery, a Japanese-owned French bakery that had wonderful pastries. We had brunch there before heading on our way. Good food. Recommended.

Today's main event was the Fernbank Museum. It was highly reminiscent of The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly. Or the Franklin Institute. It was smaller than we'd imagined it would be, but we had a really nice time there, even though it's clearly intended primarily for children. We also saw the "Amazon" IMAX film, which we hadn't seen before. They also had two amazing dinosaurs in the main gallery. I think it was an Argentinosaurus and a gigantosaurs.

Dinosaurs at the Fernbank Museum

Part of any good visit to a new city includes a search for the best cup of coffee in town. According to the websites I visited this morning, Aurora Coffee was the place to go. Interestingly, more than one person commented on the rude service there, but we had no problem. Unfortunately, their only real non-coffee drink was expensive "Fresh Samantha"-like juice, which Dan didn't want to pay for, so I drank my (very tasty) cup of coffee while Fishy read a comic book left over from Free Comic Book Day last week.

Aurora Coffee

I knew Fishy was hungry (because Fishy is always hungry), so we headed up the street to Belly General Store, which was supposed to have good cupcakes. Fishy got a vanilla one, which was quite moist, but which he thought was undercooked and smelled funny. I had to agree about the smell, which was vinegaresque, or perhaps even slightly moldy. But the cinnamon raisin bagel I had, we both thought, was delicious.

Jelly General Store



Afterward, we walked around the shops there, in the Virginia Highland area. Fishy got a mother's day card at CVS (with hours to spare), we both tried some free samples at an upscale food shop (the kind of place that sells a small bottle of lemon pear marmalade for $8), and we bought a "mini-cone" of Geranium flavored gelato for $1 at an ice-cream parlor where the salesgirl was the most non-friendly person we've encountered so far on this trip.

Oh! And we met Jesus Christ. Well, that's how she introduced herself, anyway. A pretty woman sitting on a bench saw my camera as we walked by and asked,

"What are you taking pictures of?"
"Everything." I responded truthfully, smiling.
"Tell me! Tell me!" she said. "Do you want to take a picture of Jesus Christ? Here I am, the genuine article."

At this point, I was still unsure whether she was just really friendly, or whether she was also crazy. Then I got a whiff of her and realized she was probably crazy. It was that I-haven't-bathed-in-three-months kind of smell. But she was indeed very friendly, and we talked with her for a few minutes. She showed us the stuff she'd been writing, and drawing. She even drew a picture of "the spirit" of "one of her personalities" while we watched, and she labelled it "Atlanta." I guess she is the spirit of Atlanta, perhaps? Anyway, I took a few photos of her (she especially wanted her photo taken with her Evian water, which she said was her favorite), and we eventually said good-bye.

The woman who called herself Jesus Christ

We walked around a bit more and ultimately ended up at Soul Vegetarian restaurant for dinner. It was Fishy's suggestion, which was more than a little shocking given that he'd specifically said he wanted "meat" for dinner. It was a medium-sized place, run by African Hebrews (or at least African-American Hebrews in this case), and the food, although vegan, was delicious. And the service was very friendly. The best part, we both agreed, was the vegan Mac & Cheese.

Soul Vegetarian Restaurant

We ended the evening back at Krispy Kreme again, where I got two hot, and Fishy got two Strawberries-and-Cream donuts before driving back to the hotel for an early bedtime, since my plane leaves tomorrow morning.