In a nutshell

In a nutshell, the first two days with Kobe in Atlanta:

1. we schlepped him straight from the airport to THE most important landmark in Atlanta: Krispy Kreme donuts! Ok, ok, this may seem foolish but Friday was national donut day!

At night we headed to Piedmont Park for a picknick and a movie screening of Back to the Future.

On Friday we took a dive in the Georgia Aquarium, allegedly the largest in the world:

We visited the World of Coca-cola, which is basically an interactive advertisement for Coca-cola and a reminder of how brilliant their marketing is. We tasted all 64 of their sodas. Kidding, kidding... we were on a complete sugar high after 5 sips.

We declared the cherry cola to be gross. Unfortunately, every American I told this apparently loves cherry cola. Oops.

Then we headed for the CNN center (yes, this is still the same day... I'm a very efficient tourist) for a behind-the-scenes tour.

And at night we met some friend from the trivia team for live eighties music at Park Tavern.

On Saturday, we visited a temple of high culture, the Fox Theatre, and took a behind-the-scenes tour there (you may recall photos from my previous visit).

Then we had brunch at the amazing Flying Biscuit Cafe & spent the afternoon shopping helping the American economy in Marshalls & Lenox Square.
And then we had some southern food at Mary Mac's Tearoom for dinner.
Et voilà, a speedpost on our activities of the last two days!

at last

Three days in New York (and more to come)

I only have 2 more weeks left in the US, and I'm planning to spend them in style! This week, I'm meeting two of my friends in New York for a couple of days. Instead of booking a hotel, we have rented an apartment overlooking the Hudson river through Airbnb.

Check out our view: On Saturday, we explored Soho and The Village. This is a part of New York I hadn't seen before, and its much less overwhelming than midtown's skyscrapers. A good place to start a visit to New York.





Belgians are well represented in the US. We haven't spotted the Wafels & Dinges kart yet (though we're on the lookout for it!), but we did pass a mussel restaurant.



In the evening, we took the subway to the meatpacking district, to have dinner in a hip restaurant called 'Fig & Olive'.




On Sunday, we met up with our internet friend Rebekah. A little explanation is probably in order here... Some of you may recall that I read a certain bookseries called Twilight back in 2009. And after me, Leen read it too. And when we were done reading, we went to the interwebz and found a fantastic Twilight blog run by 2 of the coolest twentysomethings in America, Letters to Twilight. Over time, we became internetfriends with the writers, and we finally met one of them on Sunday!
We had the most awesome day. We rented bikes and pedaled all over Central Park.
(Notice the blimp in the sky)


Photo taken by an alleged former National Geographic photographer.
We deserved some ice cream after all that pedaling!
Before dropping Bekah off at the busstop, we had an ultimate cougarita at TGIFridays. Don't ask... it's a long story (but a funny one if you read LTT.) In short, we had an amazing day and it was awesome to meet Bekah in real life for the first time!
The next day, we strolled over to Times Square, and discovered it had only been 5 blocks from our apartment all this time!

Daniel Radcliffe in a play? Get me tickets! Oh wait... is he not naked in this one? Well... let me see the brochure then.

(Inside the M&M store on Times Square.)
Magnolia bakery, a little piece of cupcake heaven on earth.
Enjoying our fresh cupcakes and some lemonade on Rockefeller plaza.


Grand Central Station.
Not too shabby for a train station.
Spotted at Grand Central station: I. and L. surveying the main hall.

The Apple store.

The Chrysler building.
And after spending a looooong afternoon in Bloomingdale's (with some of us spending so much all three of us got complimentary gifts at the visitors center), we had some quality burgers & fries at Bill's Diner.

As we walked back, we passed Times Square again, and it is even more impressive by night as the darkness sets off the colorful billboards.







And those were our first three days in the Big Apple... with two more days to come. W00t!