Atlanta Feb2011: Stone Mountain

I traveled to Atlanta Feb 12-18 for the IHG Americas Sales and Marketing All-Team Meeting.  This is my second ASM meeting, the first one was in May 2010 (when I traveled with Richard and Neil).  It's set up like a conference and the agenda was packed.  But this is something I looked forward to because the one last year was very well organized, informative and engaging.  It's also another opportunity to set up a few face-to-face meetings with the people I work with.  More on the work stuff in another post. =)

I left Manila on February 12.  It was an uneventful but long flight.  The thing that I had been dreading was the subzero temperatures in the forecasts.  I had my winter clothes ready in my carry-on bag because I didn't want to be miserable in the cold.  What do you know?  The sun was up and my sweater proved sufficient.=)  Thanks for the warm welcome, Atlanta!

I booked a shared ride shuttle at the airport for USD20 but nobody else came so I had my personal van going to the hotel - The Intercontinental Buckhead.  The ride from the airport took less than 30 minutes.  I wanted to just stay in the hotel, but hunger compelled me to walk the ~10 minutes to the Lenox Center Mall and get takeout from CPK. (Room service is available of course but I couldn't justify the price, even if I technically wasn't paying.  I wanted to explore the area as well so...)

Hotel room
Evening view from my hotel room.
The following day was dedicated to exploring the Stone Mountain Park.  I visited most of the touristy spots in Atlanta last year, except Stone Mountain so it worked out that Cess and Nina also wanted to go there.  We navigated the trains and buses and walked the streets towards the park.  The walking probably took most of the time we were there.



We had lunch at Miss Katie's, a Southern style restaurant where you have to catch the bread the servers throw at you.=)


After lunch, Cess and Nina bought tickets for the snow activities, I decided not to because the fake snow and slide weren't very enticing.  I looked around and took pictures instead.


I was soo jetlagged later in the afternoon I opted to go back to the hotel while Cess and Nina explored Five Points some more.  Jetlag beats the travel bug.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Filipino Friday 3: Reading Habits and Book Formats

Image
Reading Habits and Book Formats . Where and how do you read? Can you read anywhere and everywhere, or do you need a certain place/mood/state of mind to get reading? Do you read more in the morning or at night or any minute that you can? Where and how do you usually read? Are you exclusively for print, or do you go for ebooks more than print? Have you ever tried audiobooks? I am old school.  Even as most books now have digital versions, I still prefer the physical, ink-on-paper variety.  I like holding a real book, flipping the pages and being able to see my progress based on the thickness of read/unread pages.  Somehow, I feel more engaged and focused reading a physical book vs. from a gadget. I very rarely reread books so most of my collection just sit on the shelf after I'm done with them.  I feel it's a waste of precious trees if they are not shared with others.  So I started a Google doc at work where the team can list down their collections and anybod...
Read more

Trivia and Reading

Image
I am currently reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and I am inspired.  It’s about the author’s year-long quest to be happier.  It’s purposeful and practical and has lot of tips that I can apply or have started doing. Rubin focused on different areas every month and for May, it was Be Serious About Play.  The author was trying to go back to activities she enjoyed as a child. This led me to also think about a favorite childhood pastime, which was collecting trivia.  The Philippine Daily Inquirer used to run a trivia section by Bong Barrameda and I would religiously cut and paste them onto scratch papers, which I would then collate and read again and again.  Nerd zone! Not only that, I also kept a trivia notebook where I researched and wrote down interesting information like areas of study, capital cities, historical figures, scientists and discoveries, everything!  That was fun for me.  I was about to say they were useless info, ...
Read more

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Image
There is something to be said for collective recommendations like bestsellers list.  I found this title on such list at Fully Booked, read a few pages and decided to buy it.  I was intrigued by the theme of the book which is memory, specifically, how the author started as a journalist covering the US Memory Championships and ended up as a contender in the finals of the same competition one year later. It claims that with proper training, one's memory can be improved to be at par with the top mental athletes of the world.  Memory training has become an esoteric discipline because we practically do not need to remember a lot these days.  Information is very easy to retrieve from electronic devices and what not.  You just need basic search terms and the Google provides the information you need and more. Photo from Rainy Day Books I have to admit I rely on external memory a lot.  I can recall birthdays of my very close family members but outside of tha...
Read more