Not too long ago (okay, yes, it was several months ago), I took a short-ish weekend trip with my friend, Crystal, down to Atlanta, Georgia. I really had no other reason for wanting to go than to visit a yarn store I’ve been shopping online with recently, Eat.Sleep.Knit — but more about that later!

We were flying out on a Friday afternoon, after closing up shop with our day jobs. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare in order to enjoy a leisurely dinner and kick-off cocktail at Ike’s.

We packed pretty light and got a fairly inexpensive direct flight with Spirit. When you’re mentally prepared for budget travel, it’s really not too terrible — at least I thought so. My seatmate (not Crystal but rather the gal who sat on my other side) was a total grump, though. Oh, well!

We landed right around midnight (Atlanta-time), so while we waited for a shuttle to bring us to our first hotel near the airport, we scanned for peaches. It really didn’t take long to find one!

The next morning we woke up early-ish, had a pretty decent hotel breakfast then headed off for adventure. I was actually planning for a class at the shop that started around 2pm, so we didn’t have a ton of time for sightseeing (and unfortunately we had to miss out on Waffle House).

Once we found our hotel, we decided to go to the nearby Piedmont Park for a stroll/flower-sniffing/sun enjoying. (The weather in Minnesota had been okay that week, but we were still mentally healing from a blizzard two weeks prior.) We checked in at the Botanical Gardens, but made plans to really spend quality time there the next day.

I was told by a former Atlanta-native that we visited at the right time: everything was blooming but most of the pollen had been washed away and it was not Hotlanta quite yet. I couldn’t agree more (though I have no knowledge otherwise). My impression of Atlanta? It’s so clean and smells so great and everything is so beautiful! So now I can maybe only ever visit Atlanta at the end of April. (I might be planning for an annual trek to the yarn shop now lovingly known as “the Mothership.”)

And suddenly we ran into this huuuuuge field, where practically all of the sports were being played simulatenously.

I’m a weirdo for wildlife, y’all. But what kind of turkey/duck thing is this??

Crystal and I paused for a quick bite together at a random Starbucks we found in Midtown before I headed out to the shop and she headed into some art museums.

More to come…