Why on earth is breakfast served only till 9 :) Getting up was so incredibly difficult, perhaps because all I got was 6h of sleep. Little bit of time on the net and I had a plan for the day in the city of Atlanta :) Packed my bags, checked-out and spent another hour on the net replying to e-mails while waiting for the shuttle. Finally it came, the bus driver frightened me though - he was driving, eating and talking to a handheld mobile all at the same time. Iiih. After I got the bags stored at the airport, headed to town by ever so wonderful MARTA.
There is quite a bit one is able to see in 6 hrs :) Took MARTA all the way north to the art center. They happened to have a very good Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition on. His whole life was put to a timeline and lots of sketches for sculptures were displayed as well as many studies about his work. Spent about 2 hours total wondering around the 2 buildings, 4 floors each and total of 6 exhibitions. Now, whoever designed KUMU should go and learn from this art center how to plan an exhibition hall meant to display art pieces - it was wonderfully set and there was plenty of wall space to display the pictures.
My next stop was a park by botanic gardens and then walk southward towards city center. Temperature was only about 24C, but oh it felt like 30! It was baking! I kept walking on that side of the street where it was shadow :) It was truly truly hot in the sun - shorts and t-shirt would have been even too much :)
On to Olympic Gardens I wondered - a very nice park indeed. Passed by Georgia Dome once more and off to the airport my road lead. I got check-in done and I'm sitting by my gate as I write this.
Here is this guy playing guitar and singing right next to me :) Beautiful sunset is poking into my eyes and life is oh so good!
Showing posts with label atlanta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atlanta. Show all posts
Friday, October 9, 2009
Georgia Dome, U2 concert with 360 tour - 6.10
First, before I start with the whole rambling I just want to say that the concert was absolutely awesome! And now the story of a very long day too (21h awake time) :)
From the time the plane landed in Atlanta (at 16:00) to the time I sat down at Georgia Dome in my seat (18:50) I moved myself as fast as I could. Concert was to start at 19:00. If the plane would have landed 30 minutes later I would have probably missed first bit of warmup band performance.
From the airport I zoomed to the hotel which was nice and close and had transfer set up at the airport. It took me a while to get the system and find the correct shuttle bus, but Atlanta airport is quite well organized and managed so no big hassles. Did a check-in and had exactly 12 minutes to head out again and catch the shuttle back to the airport in order to take a city train to town. Not knowing about the distances here and train schedules I figured I'll just try to get to the Dome as quick as possible and once inside then worry about food. I was also pretty concerned about the masses and huge lines, still had to pick up my ticket as well. But whaddaya know :) Trains go every 5 minutes, buying tickets and finding the station and understanding the routes takes about 45" total :D It is super easy to get around over here. So rode MARTA to town, got to the Dome without any problems at all, as soon as I stepped out of the train at the station there were couple of organizers yelling from the top of their lungs "U2 concert to the right" :) Picking up my ticket took another 2 minutes total as there was nobody in line with last name starting with N/O/P :) Anyhoo, the whole process was just super easy - I've never been to this town, I have no idea what the distances are and everything goes very smoothly. Me likes this :D
Allright, so I got 10 minutes left :) Now on to less important things, like food! Last time I ate was around 6am :( I had absolutely no time between flights to get food and they have stopped offering snacks at the flights. All I had eaten whole day was 2 cookies, 1 chocolate bar and a hot chocolate (I was a bit on a sugar high). So grabbed food and watched all the people filling seats. Naturally it took another 30 minutes before the warmup band took the stage - arena was basically half empty still. I was not really familiar with Muse before (I know I know, don't give me hard time about it) but they were awesome :) Got the crowd that was there pretty riled up. They played for about 1h and then there was another 30 minute break.
By 20:45 the arena was about 75% filled. Time ticked on. Tension was growing and growing. Seats were slowly filling up. It was getting closer and closer to 9. :D I'm good huh :D AND then they appeared, there they were!! Right there, in front of thousands of people screaming from top of their lungs and clapping and whistling and taking photos. I have the video clip on my mobile :) They started with 2 newer songs and then few older ones. I was just carried to another dimension - darn they are good. When Bono held the microphone up every single person was singing along - it was like a quire, everybody seemed to sing the tune and words were very well understandable (that is what you get when being in a concert of native English speakers :) wonderful, that would never happen in front of a foreign speaking public, there it would be just a steady humming). When public was asked to raise their hand and wave then every single person in the arena raised both their arms immediately and started waving frantically - it was the coolest thing ever :)
Time flew by. At some point, maybe after an hour or so there started to come some pretty strong political messages. First about Arabic countries, then about Burma and then about Africa. Last message was mostly just about the money raised for helping get medication for AIDS. Well, I gotta admit that the whole crowd just kinda froze during those speeches. In my opinion it was a bit too much - could have stopped after the second thingie :) But perhaps it was just me. During the older songs the crowd was just melting away though. It was fabulous
From the time the plane landed in Atlanta (at 16:00) to the time I sat down at Georgia Dome in my seat (18:50) I moved myself as fast as I could. Concert was to start at 19:00. If the plane would have landed 30 minutes later I would have probably missed first bit of warmup band performance.
From the airport I zoomed to the hotel which was nice and close and had transfer set up at the airport. It took me a while to get the system and find the correct shuttle bus, but Atlanta airport is quite well organized and managed so no big hassles. Did a check-in and had exactly 12 minutes to head out again and catch the shuttle back to the airport in order to take a city train to town. Not knowing about the distances here and train schedules I figured I'll just try to get to the Dome as quick as possible and once inside then worry about food. I was also pretty concerned about the masses and huge lines, still had to pick up my ticket as well. But whaddaya know :) Trains go every 5 minutes, buying tickets and finding the station and understanding the routes takes about 45" total :D It is super easy to get around over here. So rode MARTA to town, got to the Dome without any problems at all, as soon as I stepped out of the train at the station there were couple of organizers yelling from the top of their lungs "U2 concert to the right" :) Picking up my ticket took another 2 minutes total as there was nobody in line with last name starting with N/O/P :) Anyhoo, the whole process was just super easy - I've never been to this town, I have no idea what the distances are and everything goes very smoothly. Me likes this :D
Allright, so I got 10 minutes left :) Now on to less important things, like food! Last time I ate was around 6am :( I had absolutely no time between flights to get food and they have stopped offering snacks at the flights. All I had eaten whole day was 2 cookies, 1 chocolate bar and a hot chocolate (I was a bit on a sugar high). So grabbed food and watched all the people filling seats. Naturally it took another 30 minutes before the warmup band took the stage - arena was basically half empty still. I was not really familiar with Muse before (I know I know, don't give me hard time about it) but they were awesome :) Got the crowd that was there pretty riled up. They played for about 1h and then there was another 30 minute break.
By 20:45 the arena was about 75% filled. Time ticked on. Tension was growing and growing. Seats were slowly filling up. It was getting closer and closer to 9. :D I'm good huh :D AND then they appeared, there they were!! Right there, in front of thousands of people screaming from top of their lungs and clapping and whistling and taking photos. I have the video clip on my mobile :) They started with 2 newer songs and then few older ones. I was just carried to another dimension - darn they are good. When Bono held the microphone up every single person was singing along - it was like a quire, everybody seemed to sing the tune and words were very well understandable (that is what you get when being in a concert of native English speakers :) wonderful, that would never happen in front of a foreign speaking public, there it would be just a steady humming). When public was asked to raise their hand and wave then every single person in the arena raised both their arms immediately and started waving frantically - it was the coolest thing ever :)
Time flew by. At some point, maybe after an hour or so there started to come some pretty strong political messages. First about Arabic countries, then about Burma and then about Africa. Last message was mostly just about the money raised for helping get medication for AIDS. Well, I gotta admit that the whole crowd just kinda froze during those speeches. In my opinion it was a bit too much - could have stopped after the second thingie :) But perhaps it was just me. During the older songs the crowd was just melting away though. It was fabulous
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