Southern Hospitality

You know how I started out my last post with, “Sometimes the best things in life are unexpected.”

Well sometimes that’s true… and sometimes its not…

We spent our Friday in the beautiful town of Athens, Georgia, home of our beloved Georgia Bulldogs. This eclectic college town has close to 120,000 residents and is about an hour and a half away from Atlanta. Athens has been called the “Austin of the South” due to the thriving music scene within its borders. The New York Times has called Austin  “Live Music Central” and Rolling Stone Magazine named Athens the “#1 College Music Scene in America.” Many famous bands such as R.E.M., the B-52s, Widespread Panic, and more got their start at the different venues throughout town.

My husband loves music more than anyone I know, so a music history tour was on our agenda that day, but first, we decided to stop by the famous restaurant called “The Varsity” for lunch; the place where all customers are greeted with “What’ll ya have, What’ll ya have?” when they place their order.

If I can be entirely honest, the food was just okay. It was a typical fast food restaurant with burgers, chili cheeseburgers, hotdogs, and more, although I must state that their onion rings were excellent. Before we left we decided that we had to order dessert–specifically, the fried peach pie (I mean come on, you can’t go to Georgia and NOT order a fried Peach Pie, right?) That was my excuse as I devoured the delicious peachy goodness.

We spent the afternoon working off the extra calories from the Peach Pies by walking around downtown Athens. The old buildings, the architecture, the school pride, the trees, the people, I loved it ALL. We spent wayyy too much time (and money), in the Georgia Bulldog fan stores (We really liked the Red Zone, but we also checked out the Dawg House, and the Clubhouse).

Shortly after sunset we decided to leave Athens and head back to the hotel in order to check out the restaurant we missed the night before–you know because of the last-minute decision to go to the Thursday Night Falcons game.

Again, sometimes the best things are unexpected–and sometimes not so much.

On our way back to the hotel we hit traffic. Actually, I should say, traffic hit us.  When traffic came to a stand still on the highway the car behind us crashed into us while we were at a dead stop. Car accident while on vacation=not so much fun. 

The good news was that nobody was hurt, and the best news was that it wasn’t our fault so our insurance won’t be affected (and we aren’t on the hook for the bill). The bad news was that the rental car had to be towed, and it was incredibly stressful finding a ride back to the hotel–which was over 20 minutes away. Our rental car company wasn’t going to be able to get us another car until the next morning (Thanks a lot, Alamo) and we obviously didn’t know a soul in the area.

You always hear about good ol’ southern hospitality, and it shined through that night–after learning that we were basically stranded, the tow truck driver called his boss, the owner of the Tow Truck Company, and the owner ended up giving us a ride back to our hotel. If it weren’t for them we would have been stuck at the Chick-Fil-A that night.

We were both sore from the accident, however I am grateful that nobody ended up in the hospital–or worse. I called my parents once we were safely back at our hotel and my dad summed it up nicely, “Your trip to the Bulldogs game just became a Quest to get there. This is turning into another one of your adventures.”

Well put, Dad.

After traveling so far for our Georgia Bulldogs, nothing was going to stop us from getting to the game the next day. We hoped…