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and last updated July 24th.,1999.
I hadn't expected to be met, so figured on catching a taxi, but, in fact, a cabbie flagged ME down, and seemed most enthusiastic about taking me downtown...told me he was a refugee Sierra Leonean trying to earn an honest living (etc.), and then charged me more than the set fare,assuming I'd know no better and then griped at only a dollar tip...I told him to think of his starving countrymen, and thank me for not reporting him to the Transit Authority, all Australians not having been being born yesterday !
WELCOME TO MY DAY..
IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...
Well, folks, I MADE it out of California....
And right down the coast and over San Diego and across to Atlanta.
And, as I had suspected, Delta does things the old way with hand-luggage and laptops, and made me pay $50 for the extra bag Air New Zealand made me buy!
And I tried to get shots of Atlanta from the air, but it was a day of high pollution count, and also raining, and nothing turned out clear enough for this page!
But Atlanta International Airport, (Hartfield), has come a long way since last year. We even catch a train two stops to collect our bags, now..last year I know I had to walk it!
But he had found the hotel okay, despite out language barrier.
I was a bit aghast to find the Downtown Residence Inn STILL surrounded by scaffolding, looking pretty much as it had last year, when I'd vowed to stay there, one day, when it was finished!
But it felt, and looked- GREAT inside!
But there was the little problem of my room not being free...
And all this took until after the food goes off here (7.30 pm), and apparently all the restaurants and cafes around shut at 8, most being set up for the office workers who pour back into the mouth of MARTA, right across the street, every night at five. I had lots of ice in the 'frig, but no food!..
Now , in retrospect, of course, I can trace all the mistakes I made with my feet...
This Residence Inn is a High Rise Conversion Hotel a building classified on the Historic Register, similar to our National Trust, I guess, and probably they can't get permission to put in a pool...
They were in a "full house" situation..all they had left were some smallish bedsits OK for one night but not for a week..and the desk was already occupied by a man complaining about these rooms...and since I knew I was going to take pics of the room for the website, I didn't really want to set up in one..not good advertising for them, so after a start on moving to another Residence Inn, (the taxi was even booked but Helen, the reception manager, changed her mind and said she wanted to "keep" me), I finally trundled my bags into room 2008, a 2- bedroom suite on the 20th floor....
and found the phone didn't work, so no modem..
black houseboy sidekick for security!.
Well, not if you don't count the microwave popcorn a Residence Inn always provides...
Actually I DID have some dehydrated flavoured noodles I'd brought from L.A., but couldn't be bothered, having eaten better on Delta than I'd expected to after a year of flying United. So I made coffee and set up the laptop and calmed John down because he had been calling and calling and was freaking out I wouldn't get here in time for him to issue me with all his last-minute advice before leaving for England next day..and then I had to explain to him that if he were talking to me on ICQ he couldn't ring me, on a datapoint phone, but just leave voicemail.But he wanted to talk so I logged off., (and each logon costs 50c).and then he kept sending voicemail which I was trying to acccess and so he couldn't call..and he went off the planet a bit!
But we got it all organized in the end,and I did a bit of desultory unpacking,a tad concerned, in fact, because by this time, I was beginning to realise something was very badly wrong with my FEET!!
They arrived in the United States fit and well, albeit a little swollen from the flight, and with lots of dry, red skin from winter at home.
And because I planned to do lots of swimming and baretoed things in the next few weeks, I gave them a good going over with a foot-smoothing cream I bought here last year...
And next day, in El Segundo, I walked and walked...
And the next day, too, even though they were sore, and I could feel blisters coming..
And then, on the third day I flew to Atlanta in NEW SHOES, without pantyhose or socks!
And when I took those shoes off, that night, THE SKIN CAME OFF TOO, IN GREAT LONG STRIPS!
So I thought a swim in chlorine water might be the thing..and I found...the hotel....has no POOL!!
So I had to settle for a perfumed bath and what I could improvise from my little First-Aid kit..
Which worked, sort of, but during the night the sheets stuck to my weeping dressings and it was all ..kind of uncomfortable..
But they have the original mail service here...every floor has a mail box, and access to the 20 story mail-chute....
Guess that's what they used to mean by Air Mail
And the ceiling in the main hallway is SOMETHING ELSE...one can imagine Michelangelo lying flat on his back doing this one, too
But I went walking in my sandals AGAIN!!
I HAD to go out.
I found a convenience store in the Peachtree Centre, and they had all kinds of things only pharmacies are allowed to sell in Australia, and they had nice wines as well, and bigger bandaids that I did, and I was able to buy first aid spray...
Because so much of Atlanta burned in the Civil War, they revere their old buildings and restore them lovingly, and preserve them in the midst of all the granite and steel, so that the streetscape is a real mix of facades.
IN downtown Atlanta, even the sidewalks are tesselated- paved with marble and granite....
And the office girls all wear their runners and socks out at lunchtime and to and from work...which should have told me something!
Even though I had left a grocery order at the desk (grocery shopping is another Residence Inn service), I figured I'd need to look for my medical needs myself, since I wasn't quite sure what was available, here, and there is, whether we like it or not, quite a language barrier..
So I needed to find a pharmacy!
And I found a place that would ship one of my suitcases home..at a price of course, but with very little trouble...(except that that's ANOTHER STORY!!
And I found a branch of Naturalizer, the shoestore I discovered here last year, where I can get flexible, soft, COMFORTABLE shoes quite unobtainable in Australia, and so very reasonably priced...
And I found a camera-store which had exactly the battery-charger I needed..just one, but one was enough!
And I found that my local general store was a Macy's, and that the Macy's sales were just as good as last year...
And still ON!!
And they had exactly what I wanted for the grandaughter who turns one while I am away, and the new one, to be born in Malaysia, this week or next..
And a few things that were exactly right for ME!
But I didn't find a pharmacy, not that day, and was told there isn't one, dowtown, that the nearest is two stops down on Marta, the metro rail service; (that isn't true, but I believed it at the time)
When you first look at Downtown Atlanta streets you would swear there ARE no shops, or very few, but the city has bunkered down under its airconditioning, kind of like those scifi bubbles on foreign planets, so you have to go searching for your shopping...but behind the most unlikely facades, the most elegant wares are enticingly displayed..
with lots and lots of eating, (er, GRAZING) space, too, of course, of course...
And by the time I headed back to the hotel, this on one of the hottest days of the year, here, my feet were really in trouble, bleeding down into my white sandals and making rather a mess of my newly covered orthotics....
They sent a houseboy to help me of course, and he leaned on the luggage trolley and watched with interest everything I did , occasionally stopping chewing long enough to make interesting conversation...
So I was kind of dwelling on getting inside and putting my feet up, as they say.....
Except that my keycard wouldn't work, so it was back downstairs again...(at least the lift (elevator, here) is really fast!)
And I found they were going to move me that day, not the next, which fact I wish I had known BEFORE I'd decided it WAS worth unpacking for two days!
And before I'd done all my washing and hung it in the bathroom!
Well, because I could not QUITE trust myself to tell him, I suggested he take the things I had already packed to the new room, and unload everything, while I finished up, and then he could come back for the last of it...
I had it in mind to pack my underwear and figured that would give me enough time to do it in private..but he was back almost at once, with another trolley..having left that one downstairs with all my wet washing waving a gay greeting to all and sundry!
And he gave me his undivided attention while I packed all my underclothes, and then all my computer things...no doubt to relate, at home that night, what the crazy Awstrahl'n woman was stowing away into her suitcases..
Maybe full employment, such as they have here, is not always a good thing!!
The media has naturally been monopolized by the John Kennedy story, replaying variations on a theme over and over. Here, of course, John Kennedy was viewed rather as Princess Diana was to the Brits, and his death created the same kind of national outpouring of grief..
Not that one is confined to the News Channels....my room has a little card listing 48 available television channels...
On that note, it was interesting to read that Uptons, a prominent Department Store Company is closing ALL its branches in the Atlanta area, putting more than 4000 employees out of work...the kind of thing that would be, (IS!) a disaster in Australia..
Here, no concern is felt..sure, the shops will be missed,is the feeling, but the labour market here is such that these employees will be snapped up by labour-starved businesses, and only those who don't WANT to work any more will be out of a job.
I saw some of the workers interviewed on TV., and for the papers, and noone seemed
particularly perturbed!
Being in the Deep South, and the Bible Belt, some of these stations, as you can imagine, are confined to the religious , and there are some that show nothing but educational documentaries. I have seen an enlightening study of the Ice Cream industry, and a 2 hour study of the American Hot Dog..and its kith and kin!...
But there is also a channel that shows nothing but classical music videos.....great!!
Oh...and there's baseball, too, of course, of course!
And Mississippi host, John, in England for a week for the big Air Show there, and so excited about showing me his state and his way of life, may have to come back early, and certainly will have to change his plans...
As Jean, his twin sister, messaged me, their mother has been hospitalized in Portland, Oregon, for surgery to relieve a bowel obstruction, and even though Jean is an R.N., she will need help in caring for their mother, who will be released after only 3 to 5 days , her Medical insurance cover not entitling her to a longer stay....
Hmmmm...
It just happens that I have some relevent experience in this field, having seen a father and a husband through that kind of surgery...and its aftermath!
And perhaps I can help...
Perhaps that's why I am here?
Perhaps Portland Oregon is as good a place to get the feel of the USA as anywhere else more on the beaten tourist track...
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