After
Paris, it was a week of intensive meeting in Alpheretta, Georgia. Most of the days, we woke up before sun rise and then done for the day only in the night, it was a productive week though.
One of the highlight of the trip is the extended weekend stay, where I'd be meeting my friend from college days whom I'd not met for more than 20years.
These are some memories captured for the trip.
♥Hotel - Courtyard Atlanta Alpheretta♥
We stayed at
Courtyard Atlanta Alpheretta by Marriott. It's near to the office, and at the surrounding area, there are lots of restaurants within walking distant.
Room is spacious and clean.
I like the verandah that came with my room, overlooking the swimming pool. Although it was too cold to hang out at the verandah, it offered a nice view.
I spent almost every morning at the gymn as I woke up almost 5am daily (caused by jetlag) and hence did a morning yoga before breakfast.
I like the complimentary breakfast. We got to choose one item from the menu, and a drink. It's better than a buffet with the same food served over and over again.
The best is the complimentary use of the washing machine and dryer in the hotel, detergent included.
♥Restaurants and Food♥
Office Food
Hmm.. we got catered food daily, and I didn't really like them. The worse of the lot, the food served on Tacos Tuesday.
Taco shell with a bit of every thing... eeeyucks, especially the blobs of beans....
Burgerfi
A gourmet burger restaurant, the food in
Burgerfi was so good, out of 5 lunches we ate there twice.
Chicken Apple Dog was good.
But their Vegefi Burger was even better. Didn't taste vegetarian at all, don't know how they made it, but it was juicy and flavourful.
Onion rings were good, but the portion is so big, after 2 rings, the rest just tasted greasy.
Pappadeux
Papadeux was another restaurant that we went twice. Just to get some seafood.
First dinner, I had the salmon, it was really good.
2nd dinner, I had the Alaskan King Crab, oh well, the crab wasn't as nice as Japanese snow crab, the flash tougher, and less sweet compared to snow crab. It was just for the experience.
Ghion Cultural Hall It was Valentine's day and most restaurants were full. So we found an Ethopian Restaurant which is quite highly rated to dine.
Ghion Cultural Hall it was.
It's a weird place. From a shabby entrance, we had to go through a dodgy hallway before entering a brightly lit hall which is the restaurant.
I have never tasted Ethopian food, so I can't tell if it's authentic, but I didn't like the food. We ordered a chicken and an egg dish with some special rice flour pancakes. It was like a curry dish, spicy but with very little flavour, more like a peppery kind of spicy.
We had the coffee as well, and it came with an incense burner, I don't know if it enhanced the flavour of the coffee, but it was more like a 'show' for us.
Pho Dai Loi
The best meal we'd eaten during this trip is probably
Pho Dai Loi in Atlanta, during our extended stay. It was so good we went back twice, although it was quite a distant away.
The fun part of the trip besides our stopover in Paris, is the extended stay. Sally, Lesley and I spent a good weekend together. We moved to down town Atlanta for our stay, and we put up at
Country Inn & Suites By Carlson.
We went to the
North Georgia Outlet Mall for shopping. And this is what it looks like when 3 women spent the weekend together.
It was so cold, and temperature was below 0C that when we went downtown in the evening for a 'tour', we didn't even want to get down of the car.
On Valentine's Day, which we three spent together, we decided to have a picnic lunch. Went to
Wholefoods Market to get some stuff, and then head to
Piedmont Park.
Sunny day, but oh so cold. We sat on benches, and had our lunch, slightly shivering.
The park is beautiful though.
Too bad it was so cold, or we could have stayed there longer.
Because of the cold weather, there's not much we could do outdoor, hence it was more shopping. Went to an upscale shopping mall,
Lenox Square Mall. We experienced the bad traffic which Atlanta is famous for, so bad, a few kilometers took us more than an hour to cover.
Heard so much about Athleta, I was glad there was a store there for me to grab a couple of yoga pants.
Best part of the weekend was that I was able to catch up with my friend, and also got to know my colleague better. It was a good weekend spent together, eating, chatting. Don't know when we can do this again.
Quite accurate I guess.
PS. In Houston particularly, there's not many pedestrians. Sometimes when my colleagues and I walked to a restaurant, we had to do a 100m dash to cross the road as the roads are very wide and no cars were expecting any pedestrians.
But the food was good, so far whatever we tried, they were all good.
♥The Extended Stay - Holiday♥ 