Atlanta, as Seen During an Overnight Layover

I’m by no means an expert on the city, but since I often fly Delta on buddy passes (which means holding my breath as I stare at the Standby Passengers list), I have stayed a few times in Atlanta. During my most recent visit, the city made a great impression. Very friendly people, an awesome aquarium, and New England clam chowder (yes, in Georgia!) to absolutely die for.

Here’s a layover passenger’s impression of a few things in Atlanta. Next time in town, I plan to see if there are any worthwhile tours of Coke, CNN, and the CDC to check out.

Quick Tips:

The Georgia Aquarium is an absolute must-see. While there, take a stroll across the road to Centennial Park and enjoy the grounds. If it's summer (when isn't it in Hotlanta?), take time to watch the children playing in the fountain that features the Olympic rings design.

As for food, if you like seafood, you'll love Spondivits. And if you're looking to stay near the airport, you can't go wrong with Country Inn & Suites-Airport. Take it from someone who took it from a flight attendant (the experts on airport hotels and restaurants): you won't go wrong with Spondivits and Country Inn.

When you leave, get to the airport early. Hartsfield is extremely busy. You never know when a terror alert (such as the liquid carry-on plot, in our case) will clog up the security lines.

Best Way To Get Around:

Since we were on overnight layovers, we stayed at airport-area hotels. Taxi fare from this area to the Georgia aquarium (near beautiful Centennial Park) was in a very new Lincoln Towncar that our front desk called for us. Coming back, cost aboard a taxi van parked outside the aquarium was .

If you have time and want to see multiple destinations in a day, you might opt for a rental car, but then you have to deal with maps and finding your way around.

Stayed here in 2005 during layovers to/from the U.S. Virgin islands. Since we were spending a nice chunk of change in the islands, we went with the cheapest airport hotel we could find in Atlanta. This was it.

Others thought the same. Processing at the front desk was a bit slow, and the lobby always seemed crowded with families with lots of children and even more luggage. That said, it IS an airport hotel... But that doesn’t explain the funky smell in the halls and our rooms. This place had a mild mildew aroma. An extremely through cleaning/upgrade would help.

Among the amenities are an indoor pool, bar/lounge, and exercise room. We didn’t use the pool, but it looked like every other hotel pool you’ve ever seen. The exercise room was bare-bones: a treadmill, a bike, and a few other pieces of equipment. It also had a terrible green decor.

As for the bar/lounge, it was an experience. The bartender was a plain-speaking woman in her late 40s who was accommodating and friendly, but she was far from the fastest bartender I’ve ever encountered. Yet, she was handling not only the tiny bar, but also the locals who were (loudly) playing pool and the jukebox. Still, with maybe only a dozen people, she could have moved faster.

After a long day of travel, my wife and I were starving, so we asked at the bar if we could order some food. The bartender told us that the kitchen had just closed (this was a little after 9pm), but that she’d see what she could do. A few minutes later, she returned and asked what we’d like. We went with the beef nachos and a fried chicken dinner. The nachos had a really interesting — in a good way — flavor. Sweet and only mildly spicy, they were an unexpected, welcome meal. The chicken dinner was fine, but a bit disappointing for someone who looked forward to what he hoped was genuine southern fried chicken.

Drink options were very limited (no Crown Royal that day and a rudimentary selection of beers that left me with a Coors Lite), and the abundance of signed 8x10 photos of professional wrestlers from the ‘80s to the present was a bit bizarre. As a hockey fan, I was reassured to see a hockey stick hanging on the wall and a few Atlanta Thrashers items.

At the bar we met a Swedish business traveler, and the three of us had a great ranging conversation that spanned a couple of hours, so even though the locals sometimes got too loud, we have good memories about the bar. Overall, for the hotel, however, it was below average because of the smell and dated decor. But you get what you pay for, so we didn’t feel ripped off. Truly a budget accommodation.

Though things didn’t start off well here, our stay at Country Inn & Suites was a very good one. It was recommended to me by a flight attendant who had stayed in Atlanta often.

After checking in very early (we didn’t expect our room to be ready, and it wasn’t — we left our bags in the office), Chris and I went to the business center to book our tickets to the Georgia Aquarium. This went smoothly until I tried to print our confirmation emails that included PDF-format bar codes we had to present at the aquarium. The old Windows computer (nothing makes you appreciate an Apple like a hotel business center) didn’t have Acrobat Reader installed. I downloaded Reader but didn’t have permission to install it. Rather than try to explain the need to install software on their machine, I asked the folks at the front desk if there was another computer I could use.

They were more than accommodating. They set me up at the front-desk reservations machine, but this wasn’t any better. It was incredibly slow and, for whatever reason, would only print one of the two tickets we purchased. After several attempts, an employee offered me the use of the manager’s computer. The tird time was a charm...and the entire time the staff was patient and extremely friendly with me as I tried to negotiate their slow machines. These people all had smiles on their faces and seemed to be having a good time working. That’s always a good sign.

Our room was standard and modern. It was very clean and had no funky odors. Water pressure was good, and the air-conditioning was strong. Thumbs up all around. Since we checked in around 10am, there were none of Country Inn’s trademark fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies awaiting us, but they were available for those checking in later in the day.

There are a handful of restaurants nearby, including chain establishments like Subway and Chili's. But in my opinion, you can’t go to dinner anywhere else but Spondivits. It has fantastic seafood (check out my review in this journal).

The complimentary continental breakfast at Country Inn was wonderful. It featured cold cereal selection, bagels, English muffins, yogurt cups, a couple varieties of juice, coffee, tea, sausage, biscuits, sausage gravy, eggs (precooked and kept warm via sterno), and a waffle-maker with cups of waffle batter. And I’m probably forgetting a couple things. It was a VERY nice hotel breakfast in a very nice airport hotel.

As is standard, the airport shuttle was complimentary. A taxi downtown for the aquarium cost us $30 one-way.

When you hear “wooden floors,” do images of polished, gleaming pine or maple come to mind? If so, clear your head of that nonsense immediately. At Spondivits, the atmosphere is what I like to call “genuine Southern shack.” In not trying to create ambiance, Spondivits (est. 1979) has acquired it the hard way — it’s earned it. The wooden floors (and walls and tables, for that matter) are the type you’d expect to find in shack in the bayou — old, distressed, and obviously witness to lots of living. The “windows” have the same personality — unscreened rectangles of space that allow the breeze to pass through unimpeded. When it rains, sheets of rolled plastic are lowered to keep you dry.

But enough about its character. You want to know about the food, right? Well, when we got there, there was a waiting list for tables. The bar was full, so a lot of people were standing outside with drinks in hand. A waitress came outside to take drink orders, and the missus and I were thirst for Long Island ice teas. When we both ordered one, the waitress recommended splitting a $20 30-ounce LIIT. When the giant goblet arrived with two straws, we realized we’d made the right choice. But as we sucked down the delicious drink, the clouds overhead let loose a heavy downpour. Flattening ourselves against the wall of the building kept us mostly dry, but eventually we squeezed our way inside and hung out until our table was ready.

Curious as to just how good clam chowder from the South could be, I decided to test the menu’s boast of quality. Given how good the restaurant smelled, I shouldn’t have doubted. The New England clam chowder, my wife and I agreed, was the absolute best we’ve ever had. It’s easy to see why the recipe twice won first prize in a chowder contest in Cape Cod. The rest of dinner was almost as good. I got a bucket of lobster tails and snow-crab legs, my wife got a bucket of the crab legs. With two mammoth drinks, two soups and the buckets, our bill came to around $120 ($40 in alcohol), if I recall correctly.

The restaurant was recommended to me by a flight attendant who would often stay at a hotel around the corner. Flight attendants always know the best airport-area places to stay and eat, and this was a prime example. Spondivits is an absolute must if you’re overnighting in Atlanta on a layover.

I know what you’re thinking: “A review of an aquarium’s food court? Someone’s trying to milk some IgoUgo points out of this trip.” Well, you’re wrong. At least partially.

The food court at the aquarium was unexpectedly good. There is a burger station that both of us bypassed, a pasta station and a pizza area — and a very attractive selection of desserts. I went with an individual pizza and was hoping for a pepperoni one, but since none were ready, I decided to take whatever type was next to come out of the oven. The workers plated a chef’s special of the day — sausage and peppers — and before it had time to settle in under a heat lamp it was on my tray. Chris chose a salmon pasta that looked equally good. For dessert I snatched a Wolfgang Puck gourmet peanut butter cookie and Chris opted for carrot-cake. The pizza was delicious. Good quality sausage that had flavorful spicing and a generous bunch of tasty red and yellow peppers. Good crust & good sauce. As a pizza snob, I was impressed to get this at the cafeteria of tourist attraction. Chris was equally pleased with her pasta, and the chunks of fish in it were pretty generous. But as we sat in the food court of the aquarium, we couldn’t help but wonder where it came from. They wouldn't, would they?

The cookie was dry and boring. It would have went well with a glass of milk, but on its own was not inspiring. It certainly was not a threat to the greatest peanut butter cookies I've ever had — you can find those at Subway restaurants that haven’t removed them from the menu out of food allergy fears. The carrot-cake was good. total bill for the meal with a couple fountain drinks was about $25.

Two words: Whale sharks. The largest fish in the world, whale sharks had only been kept in captivity in Asia before the Georgia Aquarium opened. Undoubtedly, they are the stars of the show.

You enter the Ocean Voyager section (one of five at the aquarium) through a clear, acrylic 100-foot-long underwater tunnel. As awesome as it is to see the silhouetted whale sharks above you here, it’s even cooler to see the fish in the viewing area, a dark room in which a 61’ wide (and 23 feet tall) section of aquarium glass is presented like a giant movie screen. Take your wide-angle lenses for this one. A fisheye lens will server you even better to capture the scale in this room. As with all exhibits, try not to use your camera’s flash — it’ll just bounce off the glass/acrylic.

Four juvenile whale sharks (in summer of 2006, Alice and Trixie joined Norton and Ralph) share this tank with nearly 100,000 other fish, including a bunch of rays and sharks. Whale sharks grow up to 40 feet long, but these are toddlers. The ladies are under 15’; the guys are around 20’. Staff say the tank can hold nine of these, though four adults are the most I’d be comfortable with in there. I think adding more would be cruel.

Aside from the whale sharks, we found the beluga whales, the funky deep-sea Japanese crabs and the jellyfish to be most interesting. The sea lions were fun for a little while, but it got dizzying to watch them repeatedly speed past. The penguins weren’t feeling all that energetic, but I’m sure that exhibit is fun at the right times. Same for the otters, which were playful on land, but avoided the water.

The tropical reef section of the aquarium probably will impress those who’ve never snorkeled of scuba dived, but with us being avid snorkelers enroute to the Caribbean with our gear, we breezed through here to focus on fish we’d never seen before. You can check www.georgiaaquarium.org/ to learn about the other sections.

FOR KIDS: There are lots of kid-friendly spots. The penguins exhibit has a crawl hole leading to an area where kids can poke their head up into a plastic dome in the habitat. If the birds are active, I’m sure it’s a cool experience. The aquarium also features a touch tank with rays and sharks.

NOTE: Admission is sold in hourly blocks. This isn’t to say that you have one our to tour the facility (feel free to pass through any of the five areas multiple times if you want), but you likely won’t be able to get in early on busy days. You should buy tickets through the aquarium website since admission times do sell out. This is esp. important to view the “4D” Omnimax movie — we logged on from our hotel in the morning of our visit and were able to book aquarium admissions, but not for the movie.

Located near the aquarium, the Georgia Dome and some corporate HQs (among them CNN), Centennial Park in Atlanta is a nice, green respite from the urban downtown landscape. Its entrances feature plaques that include the Olympic rings to commemorate the 1996 Summer Games that were held in the city and there is a small statue honoring the people who were instrumental in bringing the games to the city.

The park has a lot of open, grassy space. Perhaps even a bit too much — I think a few more trees would make it a bit more beautiful and added some more much-needed shade, but I could understand the wide open space if many festivals are held here. There are a fair number of benches to relax on and the park features a fountain that brought joy to a lot of little children when we visited in August. The fountain jets are placed along a brick courtyard that also features the Olympic rings design. Children were laughing and playing here as the water jets activated and cooled off the kids. If you stand above this area (by were the water cascades down), you’ll get a nice view of not just the courtyard, but of the pillars behind it and the many flags that fly here to mark the Olympic games.