We arrived in Atlanta last night after a 12 hour drive (including a couple stops) from Washington. The drive was not bad at all, and actually went by fairly quickly. Being able to use the internet while riding in the passenger seat certainly helped, although I spent a good deal of time just looking out the window at the changing landscape. I have never really spent a lot of time south of DC (other than a few trips to Florida), so driving through the Carolinas and Georgia was a new experience for me. For the most part, nothing looked all that different, but there were definitely some signs that we were entering a totally different region, such as the rapidly increasing number of pickup trucks on the road and the complete absence of the ubiquitous Priuses that seem to be all over the northeast.
We stopped for lunch at a small diner in the town of Burlington, NC. While it wasn't really different from diners in, say, New Jersey, it definitely was similar to what I had imagined a diner in the South would have been. Perhaps the most noticeable difference was the waitress calling us "honey" in a southern drawl. Can you imagine what would happen if somebody did that in a diner in NYC?
We're heading into downtown Atlanta this afternoon to walk around and see some sights. We're thinking about going to the Aquarium, which we have been told by many people is worth seeing. The game is tonight, but we're a little bit worried about the weather forecast. If it rains, we may end up with another day in Atlanta.
