Atlanta for Panthers vs Falcons

Trey and I have decided to try to make it to an away Panthers game every season, and this was our first one! We headed down to Atlanta on Saturday the 27th. We got there just in time to enjoy a few free samples from SweetWater. They are only open for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. 

We headed to check in to our hotel. We stayed at the Georgia Tech Hotel, right on the edge of campus. We wanted to stay in Midtown, since there are a decent number of bars around and found it on the Hotel Tonight app as a last minute cheap deal! (Only downside, you don't get to pick your room - we got 2 queens instead of a king bed)

We walked to dinner a few blocks away at a Mexican restaurant, Escorpion. It was really good! After dinner we walked around to find dessert somewhere and brought it back to the hotel room to enjoy in bed. It was so nice to take it easy and sleep in Sunday morning. 

Sunday we got Starbucks and wandered through the Georgia Tech campus to walk towards downtown. We went to Centennial Olympic Park, thought about going in to the World of Coca-cola but it was PACKED! We checked out the CNN center, also packed! Apparently it was quite a tourist day. We walked to "The Underground" since we had read it was one of the things you should do/see in Atlanta... quite a disappointment. It was basically an old, not-so-great shopping center that was just 1 story underground. Almost like a flea market. 

On our walk back towards the Georgia Dome from "the underground" we had to buy tickets for the game. We checked out lots of possible options and then finally decided on some, went straight to the gate and had success getting in! shew, I was just glad to be inside :)

 The stands cleared out early since the Falcons were losing!

The game was so much fun. There were a lot of Panthers fans around us, so that was nice. Even the Falcons fans around us were nice and way better to deal with than the WVU fans in New York. It also helped that we not only beat the Falcons we demolished them! It was the game that decided the NFC South Champion (and playoff contention) so it was pretty exciting. 

After the game we wandered through the park at night, stopped for a drink at the Hard Rock and then on to a craft beer bar, Publik Draft House, for a drink before heading in for the night. It was a busy day, I ended up getting 28,000 steps on my fitbit!

Monday morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before heading back to the CNN center. Since we didn't get to do the tour the day before, we decided to sign up for the early tour on Monday. We got to see "behind the scenes" of the CNN Headquarters. I thought it would be more behind the scenes, it wasn't amazing, but it was still pretty interesting.