Remember when we
evacuated Florida to escape the wrath of Hurricane Irma? Well, we ended up crashing with our friends,
Greg and Duwan, in Atlanta. While we were there, we did a bit of walking.
Okay before we get into the walk, let's start out with a little confession. I have no idea if this all took place over one day, two days or more. That's because things got really blurry during our time in Atlanta. All my memories are jumbled up like those Kitchen Sink cookies at Aldi's. You know the ones with pretzels, chocolate chips, nuts etc. Pretty much everything thrown in there but the kitchen sink.
I imagine some of you are thinking, "Hmm...can't tell one day from the other. Exactly how much beer did you drink while you were there?"
Sure, there was some beer drinking, but that's not the reason for my jumbly memory. It's because every day was fun. Every night was fun. Even my dreams were fun. It was just a big mish-mash of fun. Who keeps track of days of the week when you're having fun?
So, let's just pretend that this walk took place during the course of one fun-filled day. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't.
****
Here's the start of our walking adventure. A cute house in Cabbagetown, which is a funky neighborhood in downtown Atlanta. Don't you love the colors? Greg's a house painter. If you live in the Atlanta area and you need your house painted, he's the man. You can find out more
here.
This is Greg and Duwan by the way. Yep, not only does Greg paint houses, but he also plays the accordion. We're not talking your ordinary polka-kind of accordion playing. He and Duwan sing crazy cat lady songs in Spanish. The paper bag Duwan is holding up has the English translation written on it so that Scott and I could follow along. And, yes I know what you're thinking, but honestly, beer was not involved.
Oh, yeah, back to the walk. Sorry I was lost in thought thinking about crazy cat lady songs and Duwan's awesome granola bars. They have mini chocolate chips in them which explains the awesomeness.
We walked up to the park. It's a park. There were kids running around. There were dogs running around. I have no idea what the modern art sculpture dotted about is meant to represent, but I'm sure it's something profound. I don't do profound. Too much mental energy is required for profound.
We walked up leafy streets. Cabbagetown kind of reminded of us the Hawthorne district, our old neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, except on steroids. Funky, arty and a little bit weird in a delightful sort of way.
Want to see some of the weirdness? Check this out.
Across the street from this fence lives an artist that Greg and Duwan know. This is what Cabbagetown is like. You just stop, knock on the door and say, "Hey, can we show our evacuees* around your place?" The answer is always, "Sure, come on in." More often than not, they also add, "Want a beer?"
{*We got referred to as Greg and Duwan's 'evacuees' during our time there. Anyone who was anyone in Atlanta had their very own evacuees during Irma.}
This is how I like my scary sea monsters - beached on a lawn in Atlanta, not swimming in the sea near my boat.
This is one of the ways out of Cabbagetown. Not that you'd ever want to leave, mind you. But occasionally the lure of cheap beer and pizza forces you to venture further afield. That's us about to walk through the underpass which is decorated with lots of street art.
At some point, we went to a festival. I couldn't tell you which festival it was. There are a lot of festivals in Atlanta. You could spend every weekend being festive at the festivals.
I don't know who these guys are, but I'm sure they're thrilled to be featured on the blog. I just took the picture to capture the whole neighborhood feel of the festival. I wonder what they're talking about. Whether or not pretzels belong in cookies?
Lots of people walk around Atlanta. It really surprised me. Downtown Atlanta is full of lots of different neighborhoods. It's nice to see a vibrant downtown area with people out and about enjoying the good weather.
That's Joanne in the picture below. She's a lot of fun. You tell by the way she's dancing in her chair. Her husband, Vic, is lots of fun too and he wears great hats. Don't you just love a great hat?
Joanne has two dishwashers - one for clean dishes and one for dirty dishes. Why bother to unload the dishwasher and put things away when you can just pull out a clean dish from the clean dishwasher and deposit the dirty one in the dirty dishwasher? Genius. Of course, we don't have a dishwasher on our boat so anything having to do with dishwashers seems genius to me.
Just ignore the beer in the picture above. It wasn't ours. Someone left those pitchers on our table accidentally. We went to this place for the pizza, not beer.
This is a sign of good pizza - grease residue on the paper your slice came on. It's not a sign of a good-for-your-health pizza, but let's not talk about that. Pesto pizza is my new favorite thing.
Look - more people walking. That's the BeltLine, a former railway corridor that they've transformed into a multi-use trail.
We walked up the BeltLine to another festival - the Lantern Festival. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of some fun lanterns. But don't worry, there's more to come soon. Did you notice the Part 1 up in the blog post title? As I've been going through photos, I've realized that there's too much to share with you in just one blog post. So, good news...another installment of "Crazy Cabbagetown" is headed your way.
Have you ever been to Atlanta? If so, what would recommend people see/do there? Do you like going to festivals? Do you play the accordion or another instrument?
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