My second trip to Atlanta was, for me, a mostly work trip. Luckily, my wife was able to join me on this visit and we squeezed a few experiences around my conference activities. While I was off doing conference things, she visited the aquarium and the zoo, and was nice enough to indulge me on our first (and only) free day in the city touring some craft breweries. I made sure to pre-scout these so they had ample gluten free offerings for her. We had a grand time touring a few neighbourhoods we wouldn’t have otherwise visited. There was lots of laughter, some great Mexican food (the barbacoa tacos at Wild Heaven were tremendous!), a lot of tasty patio beers, and a few games of Yahtzee to get our trip kicked off well.

As it was freezing cold back home, after dinner we headed to Wild Leap Brewery near to our hotel and indulged in some outside time knowing patio drinks were going to be a long, long time away in Saskatchewan. The beers here were good, but what made it great was they had cocktail flights which made my wife very, very happy.

On one evening after my conference activities wrapped up, we headed out to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game. This was the first NBA game for my wife…. sadly, we didn’t spring for these seats.

Instead, we opted for a couple of seats way up here. The view was good enough and we enjoyed a thoroughly entertaining game between the Hawks and the Bulls, two teams who on this night had no desire to play any defence. The Bulls trailed most of the night until the Hawks couldn’t make a shot over the last five minutes to frustrate all of their fans and send them home grumpy.

The next night we headed out for a drink and dinner with friends. I’m including this mostly to show us both dressed up and looking fancy.

One of my favourite new-ish traditions of traveling with my wife is finding a city’s premier cocktail bar (or bars…. Atlanta only offered us the chance to visit one, sadly) and enjoying a few expertly made drinks. We stopped in to JoJo’s Beloved Cocktail Lounge to get our evening started. Finding it behind a slightly secret door took some work, but once we were inside, the drinks were exceptional. My wife is holding what I think was the winning drink on the evening – the “Rumble Punch” with blanco tequila, raicilla, strawberry, passion fruit, jalapeño, pineapple, lemon and pastis. I love that picture of her because she wore the shirt she bought at the aquarium earlier in the day while I was attending the conference….. and yes, she is a ray of sunshine.

We added on an extra night in Atlanta so we could have a half a day doing some exploring before taking most of the next day to fly home. As football fans, we were excited to do a tour of the Atlanta Falcons’ stadium.

There was a surprising amount of public art inside Mercedes-Benz stadium that added colour and whimsy… not things you think about when you think of football stadiums.

While we would have loved to have been able to attend a game here, the tour allowed us to see some behind the scenes things like the Falcons locker room and to set foot on the field which is always a thrill.

And in a throwback to my first visit to Atlanta many years ago, I made a return visit to Twin Smokers BBQ. My wife was excited by the fact that most of the menu was gluten free and we both ordered way more food that we could easily finish. A pretty great way to wrap up a nice visit!