Last weekend the BF and made like the birds and headed South(west) to Atlanta!  You can check out part 1 of our mini vaca here.

Soooo where did I leave off?  Oh yes, one of many two-hour naps

When we finally awoke, it was time for DINNER.  We were both in the mood for some Mexican treats and after some research we agreed on Tin Lizzy’s.  They have a HUMONGOUS menu and you can order things a la carte, which always makes me happy. What’s there not to love about sampling LOTS of mini niblets?

I was also happy to see that Tin Lizzy’s supports National Breast Cancer Awareness month AND that the restaurants sports a good sense of humor 🙂

After perusing the menu, the Man Candy and I developed a game plan.

Course #1:  A “Top of the House Margarita” for the lady, A “Fall Off the House Margarita” for the man, and Queso Fundido with chorizo, grilled onions, and peppers:

This dip was delicious—though I would have preferred larger hunks of sausage…  The bigger the better in my book 

Come to think of it, the margaritas may have been a contributing factor to my love for this dip.  What I remember most vividly is how deliciously creamy it was.  The chips had some sort of seasoning — paprika and cayenne perhaps?  The spice of the chips paired with the creaminess of the cheese made for a really good combination.

Course #2:  A second round of marg’s plus one Santa Fe Steak Taco and one Fiesta Chicken taco.  For each of us, naturally.

Good god these tacos were delicious.  The Santa Fe steak taco came with grilled steak, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, cilantro and was smothered with spicy ranch and cheesy queso blanco.  Despite being listed as a “healthy option,” the fiesta chicken taco packed a tasty punch.  It came on a whole wheat tortilla topped with grilled chicken, corn, black beans, tomatoes, onions and cilantro.  SO GOOD!

Course #3:  Margarita #3 for the man…. Big glass o’ water for the lady… AND a Grilled Chicken Tin Skillet:

Right when the food arrived, Jarrod looked concerned….

“Did I seriously just order that?!”

Even though we were both ridiculously full by this point, we managed to do some damage on this skillet.  The hot skillet was full of veggie rice, grilled red peppers and onions, jalapenos, some crispy tortilla strips, queso blanco, and salsa fresca…..   Heaven.

After eating all this delicious food, we had to do some googlin’ and see if there are other Tin Lizzy’s locations closer to home… Sadly, the only locations are in Atlanta, but this restaurant alone is worth the drive to ATL.  I promise you.

And as if that weren’t enough…..

Course #4:  Dessert from Joes on Juniper!  Sooo…. Joe’s turned out to be a gay bar (oopsie…. )….  Jarrod and I felt a little bit like outsiders… But who cares check out the dessert tray!

Enter my perpetual indecisiveness!  Gahhh!  After much debate and a few suggestions from the bartender,  I nabbed the chocolate cake with white icing and took it back to the hotel with me.  After we ate ourselves into oblivion there was nothing left to do but SLEEP.

Good thing we had a big dinner, because we didn’t eat breakfast until NOON on Sunday.  Torture, I tell ya.  Torture.  I’m surprised my body didn’t experience a complete meltdown.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who thought the Thumbs Up Diner would be a good stop for Sunday brunch, because we waited for nearly an hour for a table!

This gave us ample time to figure out what we wanted to order.  Jarrod went with the build-your-own omelet… of course.  What is it with guys and their obsession for build-your-own menus???

I got my usual eggs & turkey sausage plus a whole wheat homemade biscuit, and about 3 lbs of potatoes:

I was really excited about the homemade whole wheat biscuit — but once I sunk my teeth into it I was not a fan.  It was way too moist–kind undercooked in my opinion.  In my mind a biscuit should be flaky and buttery with a bit of a crunch to it.  This guy was DENSE.  And moisssttttttt.

Oh… and there may have been a belgian waffle 

After breakfast, we headed to the Centennial Olympic Park to walk around a bit.

We got there just in time for the water fountain show.

By then it was nearly football time!  Jarrod did some research and found a bar with the Sunday Ticket—so we were hopeful that they’d have the Browns game on.

When we pulled up outside of Black Bear Tavern I was ECSTATIC to see a decked out Browns van parked on the street!!!

Once inside I was stunned to see a bar FULL of Browns fans!  Unbeknownst to me, Jarrod had secretly scouted out a Browns bar in ATL.  It’s official.  My boyfriend rocks

After watching half the game and realizing the Browns were definitely not in it to win it, Jarrod decided to take me to lunch at a cool place he’d found last time he was in Atlanta.

Alon’s Bakery & Market

This place was AWESOME.  It reminded me of a smaller Earth Fare with less groceries and more soul.

They also had a fully stocked bakery section:

PLUS a large selection of fresh breads, pre-made grub, and made-to-order sandwiches and paninis:

They even had a fresh-served ice cream section and a mini coffee bar in the middle complete with stools for sitting!

LOVE THIS PLACE!

We grabbed a couple of salads to share:

And a few turkey sandwiches:

This was the Peppered Turkey sandwich:  naturally smoked peppered whole turkey with alfalfa sprouts, avocado, red onion, and sliced tomato served on whole wheat bread with grainy mustard and mayonnaise (AKA my sandwich soul mate).

And since the whole weekend was a major bust, we decided to try and turn things around by sitting on the patio with some dessert and some coffee.

Ok… maybe the weekend wasn’t a complete bust.  😉

P.S….   HAPPY 300TH POST TO ME!!!!

This weekend the BF and I set sail to Atlanta!  Check out our digs at the Renaissance-Midtown hotel:

We got our room for $100 a night on Priceline.  Not too shabby for a 4* hotel!

Prior to arriving, Jarrod made me agree that I wouldn’t check my email unless I was peeing or pooping.  Yes.  Those were the actual terms of the agreement.

Soooo needless to say, not much work got done at this lovely desk:

43 seconds after arriving, we decided it was time to get some grub and took a stroll over to a local bar called Charlie G’s 11th St Pub:

This was a total locals bar—well local transplants I should say because this bar is home to the Bears Upstairs (a HUGE group of Chicago Bears fans).  Both of us really enjoyed our grub.  I ordered their special chicken fajita wrap and Jare Bear got the chicken philly…  And then we each swapped each other for half:

I LOVE sharing   … though, my wrap was the better of the two (of course).

Post-lunch it was time to get our walk on and burn off some of the grub.

We walked around the Midtown area for a couple hours before heading back to the hotel.  I was dumb and wore shoes that cut into my heels, so the backs of my heels were completely raw   youch!

We took a 2 hour nap before we headed out to dinner at Baraonda.  This was my pick for two key reasons.  1:  I was craving Italian.  2:  It was half price bottle-o-wine night

Baraonda was pretty cool inside—especially the large pizza oven:

We split the bruschetta appetizer and the lasagna for our entre:

Both were just OK… The bruschetta had cold tomatoes which I am NOT a big fan of.  Maybe that’s weird, but I am a hardcore hot tomato gal.  The lasagna was pretty tasty though a bit overdone on the cheese (is that possible??!!) and not really all that filling once we split it between us.

Hmmmm what to do what to do…  We consumed a bottle of wine and not nearly enough food…

So we headed on over to the Gordon Biersch Brewery for a post-dinner appetizer and dessert, of course

The Southwest Egg Rolls appetizer was INSANELY delicious. We devoured the rolls in about 2 minutes flat.  The egg rolls had chicken and black beans all wrapped up in a crunchy shell with roasted red peppers and pepper jack cheese.  So amazing.  I cannot wait to try and make something like this for a football Sunday!

Then came the dessert:

This Triple Chocolate Brownie was ta-die-for….  It was almost like they’d warmed up brownie batter and plopped it down on the plate – no chew or bite to the brownie at all.  Just melt in your mouth deliciousness topped with a dollop of melting ice cream and chocolate and caramel sauce:

After dinner, we sauntered back to the hotel.  Jarrod decided it was time for a post-dinner workout so we hit up the gym for a few chest exercises.

Work itttttt:

Hehehe love this one

After ALL THAT we hit the hay so we could wake up bright an early for breakfast at R. Thomas Deluxe Grill:

I picked this restaurant because it had a lot of healthy options on the menu.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the place, but I CERTAINLY did not envision anything like this:

This was quite possibly the most random, cluttered, overall odd restaurant I’ve ever been to.  For a brief moment, I considered grabbing breakfast elsewhere but when the server brought me coffee as soon as we were seated we decided to stick it out.

Jarrod got the Sausage Queen omelet (Veggie sausage, cheddar, red peppers and onions, rosemary potatoes and shiitake gravy) and garlic green beans:

Green beans for breakfast?  Ok…… If you say so.

I got two eggs, toasts, and taters AKA the Break Eggs Special:

The potatoes were super tasty and I LOVED the 9 grain bread.

After breakfast we took a walk outside the restaurant to check out their crazy bird collection:

Ughhh…. I hate birds.  So freaking creepy!!!! Shortly after this photo, the bird started going crazy and hanging upside down swaying side to side in a violent way.  I hightailed it outta there.

Breakfast:  Check.

Time to get our walk on!

After breakfast we walked about 2 miles through midtown and checked out the sites – like this cool art museum.  Though the outside of the art museum is about as much art as either of us care to handle

When both of us realized we had to use the potty, we snuck into the W Hotel.  The parking lot was full of fancy pants cars.  Even a Rolls Royce!  The hotel was SWANKKYYYYY and full of young blinged-out people.  Jarrod is a huge hip hop fan, so he immediately assumed some big shot rapper must be in town.  We took a squat on the couch and tried to figure out what famous person might be staying at the hotel.. but no such luck.

After our potty break, we walked through Piedmont Park and played on the jungle gym for a bit until we both managed to hurt our shoulders… Man we are old.  So we popped a squat on the field and watched some people play football for a bit.

Check out this ref in the tight zebra print pants:

That is hot.

We stumbled on a little farmers market a little ways over from the field, so we checked out a few of the vendors.

Then we stopped over at Caribou for some coffee where Jarrod re-discovered his college obsession with turtle mochas and I discovered that Caribou’s pumpkin latte is nowhere near as delicious as Starbucks.

After another 2 mile jaunt, we arrived at our lunch destination:  Grindhouse Killer burgers:

This place was pretty funky inside.  The robots behind the bar were especially cool to look at.

Jarrod said this one reminded him of what I look like when I go more than two hours without eating:

That turd.

I went with a single burger and Jarrod nabbed a double-turkey-burger-lettuce wrap:

In all honesty, neither of these were very good.  The bun on my burger overwhelmed the meat–at times I forgot I was even eating a hamburger.  Jarrod’s turkey burger had a really odd consistency–like really moist meatloaf.  Not exactly what I look for in a burger.  BUT we did split a chocolate peanut butter shake and it was so AMAZING.  The shake was so thick that I actually split the straw in half trying to drink it!  I’d go back for the shake fo sho but pass on the burgers.

MORE walking brought us back to Midtown, where Jarrod spotted a guy who looked a whole lot like one of his favorite rappers:  Lil’ Wayne:

Jarrod figured Lil’ Wayne musta been the rapper staying at the W Hotel, so we stalked this guy for about a mile before he ducked into some building and we lost him.  Dang!

Since our lunch was meh, we stopped by Marlow’s Tavern for a few appetizers.  I really liked the vibe inside Marlows.  It was sporty but still swanky, posh but comfy at the same time.

We ordered the Chicken Queso Soup and the BBQ chicken flatbread:

The soup was good, but I wasn’t a fan of the flatbread pizza.  Hey Mary—you don’t like BBQ sauce. Remember?!  Why did you think it’d be a good idea to order a BBQ pizza?  Duh.

After Marlow’s we went back to the hotel for our 2-hr pre-dinner nap 🙂

To be continued!