Smyrna, Georgia Trips by Ruth Paget
My husband Laurent and I have been on five business trips to Atlanta, Georgia over five years. We always stay in Smyrna, famous for its restored downtown all painted in white and its huge Cumberland Mall with the Chattahooche River and park running by it.
We always started our stays with a trip to Costco to buy lunch food. I have eaten a lot of Caesar Salad and blueberry muffins in middle age.
We would go to dinner at Cracker Barrel and Marietta Diner, featured by Guy Fieri on television.
For fancy weekend dinners with my family, we would go to Maggiano’s, Cheesecake Factory, and Carraba’s – all by Cumberland Mall. I liked to eat at Applebee’s, too, but Laurent preferred fish at Cracker Barrel.
The best thing about Smyrna is Cumberland Avenue. If you turned a left from our hotel, you could drive all the way out to Blue Ridge at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains on it. If you turned right from the hotel, you could take Cumberland Avenue straight downtown to CNN.
There was an apartment complex over Cumberland Avenue right as you entered Atlanta. I would have liked to live there, if I were younger. There is a Kroger Supermarket and dry cleaners and alteration store on Cumberland Avenue nearby. You need both of those to work well in a city as well as a garage.
I always brought projects to work on during these trips. I treated them like writing sabbaticals and got my eight books typed, proofed, edited, and placed on Kindle along with writing 500 publicity blogs. Atlanta’s heat kept me in the room working.
I liked going to Cost Plus World Market when Laurent was done working to buy souvenirs such as coffee, books, and biscotti.
I still view Atlanta as place to get things done, buy nice souvenirs, and eat well.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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| Ruth Paget Photo |
