Here’s a little story of what I did with my 7 hours stopover in Atlanta, Georgia.
Basically, I was flying from South America with a group of 6 people - on route to the UK - and the flight went via Atlanta where we had to wait some time before our connecting flight. Why waste the transit time sitting in the airport we thought - lets go investigate.
As we were transit passengers, we just checked our hold luggage straight back in after collecting it from reclaim, and headed outside. It took us about 30 minutes in total to get off the plane and out into the street as we had had to get on a local tube for a handful of stops.
We had a mini meeting and worked out that we had to be back to check in one hour before the flight, so we had 5 and a half hours to fill here - we headed for the nearest mall grabbing a coffee on the way!
Luckily it was quite early, so the mall was reasonably quiet as we entered and tried to find our way around. The couple from our group said they would spend the time alone, so we were down to 4 - then we saw the sign for the movie theatre…….
There was only the new Texas ChainSaw Massacre film showing in the next few minutes, so that was the one we watched! Bearing in mind this was around 11am it wasn’t our preferred choice - but time was against us and it was an easy way to pass the time.
So, shocked out of our skins 2 hours later, we emerged from the movies a bit paler than we went in! There was almost a hush across the group as we hit the sunlight again, before we remembered where we were: 2hours 15minutes remaining.
The only man amongst us said that he fancied a new pair of trainers while he was here and one of the girls said she wanted to look at some scents (?) so we split up - arranging to meet at the big restaurant we had seen at the entrance to the mall in just under 2 hours.
I had started to get a bit of a cold by now (great!) so I was on the look out for a drugstore. I made the mistake of walking into the entrance lobby of a department store and was imediately doused in scent spray from the over-zealous sales assistants and promptly started sneezing continually until I was well away from there! Great sales technique ladies - scare people away from the entrance to your store!!!
So with shrunken watering eyes I kept looking until I finally located a drug store tucked away in a corner and started reading labels. We had a long flight ahead of us and if I had a cold, I wanted something to send me to sleep - I needed ‘drowsy’ in big letters on the packet!
Failing to find one, I asked the assistant for ‘drowsy’ and she told me in no uncertain terms that ‘NOTHING’ she sold would make me drowsy - ‘why would I want that?’ Obviously she thinks everyone wants to stay wide awake when they are ill???
I brought something non-drowsey anyway - and plenty of tissues, then headed to the restaurant a bit early. I sat myself down at a table for 4 much to the annoyance of the staff and ordered a lovely chicken fillet with curly fries and BBQ sauce to cheer myself up.
The others all arrived one at a time with bags of new products and ordered something themselves and we chatted away about anything really while we ate.
Then, time was up and we had to head back to the airport.
Looking back it would have been great to have researched it more thoroughly, and since I have another long stop-over coming up with my family this time, I found an Internet sight showing trusted tours and attractions for Atlanta and other US cities to help us make more use of the time while we are there.
Basically, I was flying from South America with a group of 6 people - on route to the UK - and the flight went via Atlanta where we had to wait some time before our connecting flight. Why waste the transit time sitting in the airport we thought - lets go investigate.
As we were transit passengers, we just checked our hold luggage straight back in after collecting it from reclaim, and headed outside. It took us about 30 minutes in total to get off the plane and out into the street as we had had to get on a local tube for a handful of stops.
We had a mini meeting and worked out that we had to be back to check in one hour before the flight, so we had 5 and a half hours to fill here - we headed for the nearest mall grabbing a coffee on the way!
Luckily it was quite early, so the mall was reasonably quiet as we entered and tried to find our way around. The couple from our group said they would spend the time alone, so we were down to 4 - then we saw the sign for the movie theatre…….
There was only the new Texas ChainSaw Massacre film showing in the next few minutes, so that was the one we watched! Bearing in mind this was around 11am it wasn’t our preferred choice - but time was against us and it was an easy way to pass the time.
So, shocked out of our skins 2 hours later, we emerged from the movies a bit paler than we went in! There was almost a hush across the group as we hit the sunlight again, before we remembered where we were: 2hours 15minutes remaining.
The only man amongst us said that he fancied a new pair of trainers while he was here and one of the girls said she wanted to look at some scents (?) so we split up - arranging to meet at the big restaurant we had seen at the entrance to the mall in just under 2 hours.
I had started to get a bit of a cold by now (great!) so I was on the look out for a drugstore. I made the mistake of walking into the entrance lobby of a department store and was imediately doused in scent spray from the over-zealous sales assistants and promptly started sneezing continually until I was well away from there! Great sales technique ladies - scare people away from the entrance to your store!!!
So with shrunken watering eyes I kept looking until I finally located a drug store tucked away in a corner and started reading labels. We had a long flight ahead of us and if I had a cold, I wanted something to send me to sleep - I needed ‘drowsy’ in big letters on the packet!
Failing to find one, I asked the assistant for ‘drowsy’ and she told me in no uncertain terms that ‘NOTHING’ she sold would make me drowsy - ‘why would I want that?’ Obviously she thinks everyone wants to stay wide awake when they are ill???
I brought something non-drowsey anyway - and plenty of tissues, then headed to the restaurant a bit early. I sat myself down at a table for 4 much to the annoyance of the staff and ordered a lovely chicken fillet with curly fries and BBQ sauce to cheer myself up.
The others all arrived one at a time with bags of new products and ordered something themselves and we chatted away about anything really while we ate.
Then, time was up and we had to head back to the airport.
Looking back it would have been great to have researched it more thoroughly, and since I have another long stop-over coming up with my family this time, I found an Internet sight showing trusted tours and attractions for Atlanta and other US cities to help us make more use of the time while we are there.
