Atlanta Part Deux Redux: The Food!

We're back from Atlanta, and it was a great trip. And while I still didn't fully explore the city, I got a good taste of it! We did almost nothing but work and EAT the whole time we were there. I'll get to the stuff we actually did do later, but here's a breakdown of our culinary tour.

- Fried pickles, fried okra, a BBQ plate with beef brisket, ribs, "Fritos" pie (a bag of Fritos with chili and cheese on them), spicy green beans, sweet tea, and banana pudding at Fox Bros BBQ. I'd never had fried pickles or fried okra, and both were tasty! And the BBQ - well, I guess there's a reason they're ranked #1 BBQ in Atlanta - it was so good! We definitely ordered too much, though, we all had leftovers, which is a bummer when you're traveling.

- Two awesome breakfasts (Thursday, then Saturday) of eggs & turkey bacon, then a "Southern scramble" of eggs, turkey bacon, cheese, and greens, both along with "creamy dreamy grits" and an amazing biscuit from The Flying Biscuit Cafe. The grits and biscuit were out of this world. I would have eaten there every morning if it had been possible. And the "southern scramble" was one of the better egg plates I've had in a while. I also love the use of turkey bacon!

They had all kinds of cute "The Flying Biscuit" stuff!

Pack light?

Fun article about packing light for summer vacations... check it out!

How to Pack Light This Summer

I? Did not exactly pack light. I didn't go too overboard, but I definitely could've gotten away with less.

House sitters in place, we're almost ready for our vacation!

Why the TSA sometimes rocks the house.

I have a story to share with you that renewed my faith in the TSA as a security agency.

A friend of mine recently took a weekend trip and had a really unfortunate experience with the TSA at her local airport that was later rectified in a great way. (I won't say which airport because that wouldn't be nice, would it?)

Here's the gist of her experience.

Ireland & Italy Trip "to get" list!

Things I need to get for my trip:

- A new point & shoot camera. I'm a camera gal. I have a Nikon dSLR, and I'll be borrowing a friend's Kodak Playsport video camera. But I need a new point & shoot camera. I always stress having a point & shoot camera for the times you don't want to carry around the bulkier dSLR - and my Canon Powershot has served me well for the last 5 years. But the time has come to get a new one, and I believe I've found the one I want: the Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS.

Checklist

Airfare - check
Hotels - check

Ok, two things checked off, a million to go!

Still on the list?

Rental car for Ireland
Getting all the crap I need for the trip
Signing the dog up for training/boarding

Oh yeah, and the big one: Pay off the credit card. (Sad face to that one!)

Rough outline: Ireland

It's been difficult to draft our our time in Ireland because we're still so unsure of what we want to do and see. We know we want to rent a car at the airport when we get there, and we know we want to spend the first few days off the beaten path. So I'm sure this rough outline is going to change, but if I was the only one making decisions on this trip, here's what I'd do!

Sunday:
- Arrive in Dublin, rent car
- Drive to West Coast, taking our time and stopping along the way
- Arrive in Donegal around 4pm and spend the rest of the day in town

Rough outline: Siena & San Gimignano (v2)

Of all the days of the trip, the ones we've adjusted the most are the days we're in Siena and Tuscany. I'm really happy with how we've adjusted things, because 1) we now have more time with SAY and Dr G, 2) we're doing a few things that are new, and 3) we have lots of free time to just enjoy Italy and where we are!

Saturday:
- Arrive in Siena in the evening (bus or train from Rome is around 3 hours)
- Meet up with friends, check out Siena, wander around

Rough outline: Florence (v2)

I could spend an entire trip to Italy based out of Florence. It's been my home city away from home since I did a semester there during college, and I'm super excited to be heading back soon! We'll only have two nights there, so we'll be packing in quite a bit, but I think we'll still have time for everything.

Wednesday:
- Arrive in Florence by bus late morning, check into hotel
- Uffizi gallery for Shorty - it's on her bucket list of things to do on this trip! I'm not sure I'll go in this time around, since I spend many extensive tours there when I lived in Florence.

Rough outline: Rome (v2)

It seems like this trip is constantly changing!

But now that we have our itinerary set, at least in terms of airline flights, I'm going to revise the rough outline of a Rome itinerary from a few months ago.

It's actually fairly close to the same itinerary, with the adjustment that we don't get to Rome until late Thursday night, and have an extra night there at the end of the trip. Also, my friends who are getting married let me know that there's a rough plan to celebrate the Bride's birthday and everyone meeting up in town on the Friday night we're there!

A love letter to bella Firenze

View of the city from Piazza Michelangelo.

I've discovered in our recent trip planning that many people who have been to Italy either didn't enjoy Florence immensely, or could take it or leave it. It's rarely people's favorite city. And I can kind of understand - it lacks the romanticism of Venice and the vast history of Rome. It doesn't have a leaning tower or The Last Supper. It can be crowded, gets very hot during the summer, and is fairly industrial and dirty. The public transportation isn't as good in Florence as in other cities, and it's pretty pricey.

But despite all of those things, Florence remains my favorite city in Italy.

Bus travel around Tuscany

As much as I love the train system in Italy, one of the places I didn't explore as much as I wanted to in 2002 when I lived in Florence was Tuscany. I know, crazy, right? Since it's RIGHT THERE? I didn't see as much of it as I wanted because I was young and new to travel and didn't like to go places I couldn't get to on a train. A train was safer, you see, because it had one place to go, and was pretty difficult to mess up with. Buses, on the other hand, were tougher - there were different timetables and schedules, where to get the tickets was always somewhat of a mystery, and there were rarely the convenient audio reminders of which station you were about to get to.

Bus travel in Italy requires a little more effort than train travel, but the benefits of getting to go to the smaller towns and locations were great.

Day Dreaming of San Gimignano, Italy

I've been having a serious case of the day dreams when it comes to trip planning lately. Now that we're officially going, I've been playing around with itineraries and things to do, and talking to the people we're going to be traveling with, and I'm getting really excited.

My newest day dream? Adding a night in San Gimignano into the mix.

Know your airline's luggage restrictions!

Now that we finally have our plane tickets for our Europe trip this summer, I've been changing my focus to other aspects of our trip. Our luggage has been a big one for me - I had been trying to figure out if there was a way I could possibly pack for a two week vacation (including a wedding) in two different countries and just have a carry on. I'm pretty much to the point of admitting that's not going to happen, so now I'm focusing on the logistics of having to check a bag.

Europe 2011? BOOKED!

We booked our flights!

It's officially official - we've got our tickets for the trip! And while expensive, we found a deal that included the flight to Ireland, the flight from Dublin to Rome, and the flight home from Italy.

Our trip includes four nights in Ireland!

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

We've gone and done it again.

We've changed our itinerary.

I realized as we were planning that something was holding us back from our plan - something kept us from getting tickets last year. The themes that kept coming up when we would talk about it were 1) the amount of time we would be gone, and 2) the budget.

So I sat down with BF, and with M and Shorty, who are planning on doing the same itinerary as us, and we came up with a plan that we were all a little more comfortable with.

The old plan was: Italy first for 9 nights, then Ireland for 6 nights, with a proposed budget of close to $4,000.

The new plan is: Ireland first for 5 nights, then Italy for 7 nights, with a proposed budget of around $3,200.