googletravy's Sunday June 3rd, 2012

Drove the whole way down today. Pretty beautiful once you get out of Illinois. Kentucky and Tennessee were amazing. I would love to go back and actually visit some sights another time. I'm thinking a whiskey/cavern/horse tour. Drove through Louisville for the first time... Seems like the place is just a city full of stadiums lol.
All in all the drive took about 14 hours to our hotel in buckhead, a suburb of Atlanta. Drove through a pretty ritzy neighborhood- it was awesome. Crewmate booked a 5 star hotel on hotwire for 99 bucks.... Schwing! Unfortunately van burgundy didn't fit into their parking garage, so we dinked around with that for a while and ended up having to go to a city parking area for 50 bucks for the night- ouch. Buzzkill. So we decide to hit the bar downstairs, the bourbon bar its called. Wow- they have a wall of bourbon- seriously- like over 100 different kinds... It was awesome. We definitely didn't fit in- we were the only guys there who weren't members of the khaki pants club apparently. The place was upscale- if they had a rail whiskey it would have been makers mark or jack daniels- the cream of the crop up in wisco. At first I order a high life from their menu- I was just craving a beer- then the waitress comes back and says they don't have it- obviously nobody has ordered it in a while lol... So we had a couple drinks and racked up a $90 bar tab in like an hour and a half. Oops! But it was well worth it. Tried a couple different kinds and learned a lot more about the aging process and how it affects the flavor. My favorite was buffalo trace- super smooth and a "reasonable" price.
So then we hit this bar/restaurant down the street which is actually closed, but we sit and bullshit with the waitstaff there for a good half hour. They were very kind and fun to talk to. As we start walking back to the hotel we run into some guy- I think he was Indian and his Cuban wife who just got out of a dance club. We get to talking to this guy about Atlanta, wisconsin and football. Turns out we are staying at the same hotel and he just gives us a $100 bill and says "have fun tonight- here's a little southern hospitality." Haha there goes our bartab from earlier. Pretty crazy night. And we didn't even order from the ham bar!