Today is our last day in Atlanta and is basically just a travel back home day but it’s still worth mentioning and documenting some stuff for the sake of memory and records. At the end of the travel photos I have some merch/loot photos to share to give an idea of what I picked up this trip and some final thoughts about the Nier Concert, hotel, Atlanta and how the trip went in general. Well then, let’s go home.
Waking up pretty early in the morning at our hotel, something like 6:30am we got up and did the final packing of our luggage to check out of the hotel, which we did so at around 7:00am. I was going to uber to the airport this time but as I approached the exit of the hotel one of the security guards said hay are you looking for a ride to the airport? I said yes and he re-directed me to a taxi already waiting in front of the hotel, sure why not, noice. When we got to the airport, international terminal it wasn’t that busy, at least for the baggage check-in for Air Canada flights as seen above.
Doing a final check before we line up to security check, this is our documentation of luggage. The carry on on the right was flagged by staff because the plane we were going to be on was small and didn’t have enough space in the overhead storage compartments and had to be checked in with regular luggage. We didn’t pay extra but it was a bummer because that carry on had most of our merch in it, some potentially breakable. The staff put a fragile sticker on it when we raised some concern, better than nothing I guess.
For some reason it was very busy in this initial early morning check-in to get pass TSA security and carry on check, I think we were in line for at least half and hour or so. Strange, I hate this part about traveling the most but I suppose you gotta do what you gotta do.
Ah yea, just after passing and finishing your security check has this nice board reminding everyone why we still have to do this shit. Ahh, yea, of course.
The Atlanta airport is one of the busiest airports in terms of traffic and has several terminals, this one is just the International terminal and has a number of shops, lounges and fast food quick eats for waiting travelers.
Inside one of the bigger convenience stores/gift shops serving the terminal has some pretty interesting magazine literature all about guns and weapons. Hmm. Only in America I suppose.
The upper level had the main food options in the terminal, from the left, some Manchu wok kinda Chinese food, an outpost of The Varsity fast food burgers and hotdogs – the same place we went to earlier on the trip for lunch, a taco place and some place selling southern classic or at this time standard breakfast fare.
They also had a starbucks nearby which was extremely busy, both serving both travelers as well as staff and pilots for various planes as well as the line was quite long. All the employees were black, when the demographic of Atlanta is basically 50% black I suppose this happens all the time.
Waiting for our starbucks order there is an overpass where you can see below some of the waiting area for some of the gates. Not bad.
Got some nice cold brew vanilla cream drink, basically tastes alot like ice coffee more or less lol. My sister got some vanilla bean frapacinno. Noice.
We ended up getting some breakfast fare from that last place in the photo called the pecan bistro something. It isn’t exactly the waffle house but it will do I suppose, they took a very long time to get orders rolling because they were waiting for this cornbread like muffin to be baked, which was alright. Overall very forgettable but a meal is a meal I suppose. There was a free form coke machine that seemingly everyone was using without having to pay for so I used it as well, it only had spirte and fanta orange/cherry for some reason sure, free drink is free I guess; can’t complain.
Proof of existence, waiting for our flight to arrive. We waited for a little over an hour or so before our flight was scheduled toarrive but they were a bit delayed, like 15 minutes or so which is fine I guess. After the initial rush in the early morning from the TSA gates the airport was very quiet and kinda dead after lol, strange indeed.
The plane we were on was just as small as our first plane but seemed even older since it had smaller storage compartments and didn’t even have onboard display screen/entertainment system which was fine because the flight itself was like only an hour and a half, very short I think. Or at least that’s what they said, I couldn’t really tell where were were or what time we were supposed to arrive without a display map. Ah-well. When we got to Pearson we had to go the usual long ass route to clear customs and declare nothing as per usual via machine. Once we were out we collected our two pieces of luggage and notified our dad for a ride back home from the airport without much incident. Noice. Safe home.
From this point on, I’ll go over some of the merch that I got from this Atlanta trip:
As our primary reason for coming to Atlanta in the first place was the Nier Orchestra concert, it goes without saying that I brought merch from them at the event venue, hence all the planning and early line up on day 1 lol. Seen above is a key-chain with the key tour art, a music box with one of the main themes from the games, Kaine’s theme, a collection of 3 postcards with related tour art and lastly at the bottom is the self explanatory CD box set of the orchestral arrangement. Good collectable goods for sure.
The postcard set has these 3 other postcards once you open it up. Not bad, I wonder why they didn’t want to use the other two artworks for this concert as-well since they look just as nice and cool looking as opposed to going all in on the snow one with 2b/9s floating looking at an Emil head. It’s definitely the best but it would have been nice to have more merch with this other art as well.
The last group of Nier merch is of course front in center is this 2b plushie from Nier Automata, when we were lining up for the merch, I overheard some of the organizers/merchants saying something along the lines of “looks like the girl with the blindfold is the most popular one, we are almost out of her alreaddy; I had brought up from merch storage equal distributions of all 3, should I go and bring more of the girl?”, “yea, probably, but make sure you don’t bring out too much, because the organizers said that once you bring them out, you can’t put them back in, you hear?, “yea, got it boss, going now.” Jokes. Behind the plushie is a Nier Replicant select Vinyl LP box set, consisting of 4 records of arranged tracks from the game. I don’t even have a record player but I don’t’ care. People buy records today for the box and album art, as collectables, I have become one of them. On the left is a clear plastic poster using the main concert art, noice, but a lot smaller than I thought it would be, just a little bigger or same as A4 sized paper.
With that said, let’s take a look as some of the goods I picked up from the world of Coca-cola museum. Lots of key chains, fridge magnets, and a couple of vintage looking coasters for good measure. The fanta pin was from a gacha blind box, jokes. I also couldn’t resist picking up that old vintage art magnet with the 1950’s art couple, so jokes. Top left is a fancy cork mug that has a cover and apparently can keep drinks hot for 3 hours and cold ones for 6 hours, wow. On the far right is a sole keychain trinket that I picked up from the Georgia aquarium, they didn’t’ have much stuff that interests me.
Above are two really nice looking hats sitting ontop of 3 other coke branded tshirts, 2 black and that blue korean text one on the top. The hat on the left has Japanese text so I couldn’t resist while the one on the right just looks really nice. I don’t even wear hats myself but over the past couple of years I have continued to become something of a hat collector myself it seems lol.
I also picked up this really nice coke branded zipper sweater. Very nice and solid design. My sister also ended up buying one aswell in her size. Unlike some of the other hololive clothes/hoodies that I brought last Nov at AnimeNYC, this hoodie I might actually wear in public, but we’ll see lol.
I also picked up from Starbucks, both in Atlanta and in Toronto on my return home respective city based mugs, which I have also acquired something of a taste for when traveling to new places ever since I got back from Japan. Also that black fancy coke mug on the right for size comparison. Noice, as long as I continue to visit new places that have Starbucks in there cities, I will continue to buy these mugs lol.
I have also have a mild interest in collecting these medallions from tourist trap like places as bait and useless as it sounds lol. I got some from the Intrepid Carrier in NYC so when I saw these being sold at the Georgia aquarium I thought to myself, lol why not. So yea, I also kinda semi collect these as they are the successors to the old press a penny with a design on them but are pre made already, with no gimmick, just nice looking not-coins to collect lol.
Post-trip retrospect/rant:
And with that said, that ends all loot and merch review for all of my Atlanta trip, not too shabby I would say but at the same time, hardly in the same league as the stuff I got in my Japan or even NYC/AnimeNYC trip, which is somewhat understandable. The primary goal of this trip was to attend the Nier concert which just so happened to be aligned with days off and easter and my sister’s schedule and also being the only tour destination that was still available, I did not go to Atlanta just for the fun of it or the city itself; in fact, I would probably never go back to Atlanta ever again without a reason to go there.
Make no mistake, the Nier concert was amazing and fully worth the money I paid for it, Atlanta itself however; outside of the Coke museum and Aquarium, is a painfully bad tourist destination, at least in regards to my interests. There is actually nothing to do for a tourist outside of Coke Museum and Aquarium, the other thing you can go to is maybe see some museums about MLK jr, as this is his birthplace and home for civil rights, but I don’t care that much personally. The city does not have a central downtown core and most of the time between locations, there is no shops, no food places, no public gathering or meeting areas, no convenience stores or whatnot between one place and another, no discoverability or gems to find like you might experience in New York or even in Toronto by comparison. When people go somewhere in this city they know exactly where they are going from point A to B with little to no possibility for exploration because everyone here drives. The streets and sidewalks of Atlanta are nice, very big, green and clean and wide but 90% of the time empty, I would be hard pressed to see any other people walking them or pedestrians at all for that matter. Atlanta is a commuter city where it feels like people don’t actually live there but people drive to from out of town or neighboring communities in Georgia to do business or have a convention, meeting or sporting event from time to time, not actually live and develop community or stronger urbanized culture which is unfortunate. As a result of this, stores and restaurants close early by big city standards leaving only a handful of places to eat at in the evening outside of fast food. When they are open for business however, the food culture is great, offering up and living up to the best staples of the American South with fried chicken, biscuits, seafood, grits, waffles and other more diverse food tastes like Indian, Mexican and Korean even, the problem however is once again, everything is so far apart.
As for the feel of the city itself, there is a feeling of more peace and ease between people in general, less racial tensions because black people are the majority but at the same time, I see and experience other issues like workers not giving a shit or being lazy far more frequently. My hotel stay was far below my expectations and I know now the errors of my ways as I should have checked all the 1-star google review of this place, the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Midtown and their complaints, they are all correct and true. From the poor lazy incomplete room service and hands off approach from lobby staff, missing towels, lack of toilet paper some nights, lack of fridge, no ventilation system in the bathroom and a unfix-able leaky bathtub faucet, paying an addition $75 per night for a security deposit just in case there is damage in the already damaged room suites, shitty elevators and only ice machines on even numbered floors, I think this has been the worse hotels I have been to in recent memory, regardless of the booking issues due to the girls volleyball tournament.
While there is far less hooliganism out in the public on display, I get the feeling that there is more gangster and criminal activity in the shadows and extends to the suburbs. This may or may not have happened but while walking to the Park 27 Korean bbq restaurant yesterday, there was a large entourage of import souped up cars barrelling down the street with very loud sounding mufflers; I thought nothing of it but according to my sister, the passenger side of the head lead car, apparently fired a few shots in the air from the window using the large muffler bursts to mask the sound of the gunshots. While I don’t fully believe it, she swears that she saw gunshots bursts into the air as the entourage drove off. I dunno man but it does seem somewhat on brand for residents of Atlanta being the birthplace of hiphop trap music after all… I don’t’ even know what to think anymore in this regard lol.
But at the end of the day, would I travel just for a concert? Hell yea I would; but to to Atlanta again? No, probably not; there is far better places for tourism than this city as far as I am concerned. I have pretty much min-maxed my experience to the best possible outcomes, there really isn’t much left for me to see or do here anymore, unless for some reason I really want to see coke world or the aquarium again, there is very little reason to go back to Atlanta.