This post brought to you by guest author Justin Tyson (my husband) :)
The second college football game of the season. If you're a diehard Georgia Bulldog or Carolina Gamecock, you know that the game will be a hard-fought battle. Regardless of the outcome, by the end of the game, your nerves will be frazzled and handfulls of your hair will be scattered about the room. Imagine, then, that you are a diehard Georgia Bulldog who happens to be married to a Carolina Gamecock (or vice versa).
For the first two years of our relationship, we braved the dangers and attended the annual clash between the Palmetto State Poultry and the Classic City Canines in their respective stadiums. Both times, the 'Dawgs wound up atop the bloody heap, and both times, we considered ourselves to be quite fortunate to be on speaking terms by the end of the weekend.
Now that we are married, however, the stakes are higher. We're talking about wedding gifts here, people. Why risk settling for dual custody of a red KitchenAid mixer and a fabulous set of Calphalon Cutlery over a silly game? This year, Casie and I knew better than to risk our marriage at a stress-inducing stadium, and instead planned a weekend getaway where we could relax and watch the game in the comfort of our own hotel room. We needed a something a little different. Something luxurious. Something exotic. Something like....Atlanta?
That's right, Atlanta. For country folks like us, Atlanta is about as far removed from what we know as "The South" as Madagascar. Of course, we had other reasons for choosing such a seemingly pedestrian locale for our getaway. For one thing, the price of a night's stay at a four-star hotel in Atlanta is comparable to that of a two-star hotel in a more rural tourist destination, like Boone, NC or Berea, KY (I know, I checked). To find the best deal on a hotel, I always turn to my favorite travel site: Hotwire.com.
The downside to Hotwire is that you don’t know, specifically, what hotel you’ll be staying at until you’ve already put down the cash (or credit card digits, more specifically). Casie and I have been very lucky when using this website – we used it to book two nights in San Francisco on our honeymoon earlier this year – so once again, we threw caution into the wind and plopped down $170 for two nights in a four-star hotel based on little more than a vague map and a few rave reviews. What a surprise when we found out that our room was on the 52nd (out of 72) floors of the famous “Peachtree Plaza” – the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere!
When we checked in on Friday night, we opened the door to our room and were immediately greeted by a panorama of city lights. It was Atlanta like I’ve never seen it before. It was beautiful. It was exactly what we needed.
Unfortunately, our camera died after snapping these two photos so we were unable to document the rest of our weekend (and too cheap to buy new batteries).
The following day was spent as lazily as possible. A day of sleeping in, eating in bed, and watching college football was exactly what we needed. I, of course, could have done without a 17-6 loss to team coached by Steve Spurrier, but in this relaxed environment, I was able to look at Casie without an heated pool of misplaced rage dripping from my ears within a couple of hours. It didn't hurt that immediately after the game she went down to the lobby and came back with a pack of Reeses, my favorite snack!
On Sunday, we decided to act like proper tourists and visit Zoo Atlanta. There are many attractions in Atlanta, of course, but what really set Zoo Atlanta apart is their ‘college student discount’. Nevermind the fact that neither of us are college students. We both have our old college IDs, which, as it turns out, are just as good. I won’t bore you with the details of our visit, except to confirm that yes, it would, indeed, be awesome to be a panda at a zoo. Who wouldn’t love to spend every day garnering fascinated attention by merely reclining in a hammock and munching on a never-ending supply of bamboo? Mmmm…bamboo.
Monday, unfortunately, brought us back to the real world, but I think Casie and I would both agree that next year’s UGA/USC game should involve a similar escape from the ordinary.
