Day 17 - Birmingham to Atlanta to Glasgow

We slept a bit late and missed breakfast entirely but by 930 we were on the road to Atlanta. K was desperate for a french vanilla flavoured iced coffee and she'd scouted the location of some Pilot petrol stations off the Internet as she knew they did it. At the first one we got to the iced coffee machine was out of order, she was gutted but then said there was another Pilot 2 miles up the interstate so on we headed. The junction at the next one was mental cos it was near Talladega and there was a big nascar thing at the weekend. However, it was a success and the iced coffee was purchased. We also got a pack of crisps like cheetos crunchy but by Golden Flake who have their factory in Birmingham. We wanted to do their factory tour yesterday cos apparently it's brilliant but they are closed on a Sunday.

Back on the road and we were rolling through super green Alabama for a bit then we crossed our final state line of the trip, back into Georgia where it all began. We didn't get to Atlanta til just after one and we wanted to leave the centre at about 6 to make sure we had enough time to get the car back etc so it was approx 5 hours in Atlanta. We stopped in at the CNN centre which was pretty cool but we didn't do the tour. We just went to the food bit and got our first taco bell of the holiday. Just in the nick of time! Both of our meals came with 3 tacos and we both left one - pathetic! We had a wee look round all the CNN shops including the cartoon network one but didn't end up buying anything.

Our next stop was to be Olympic Park but we got there to discover it was closed cos they'd had a music festival in it over the weekend. We were gutted, I wanted to see the fountain shaped like the Olympic rings! We wandered down to the tourist hub where the coke experience (they're based in atlanta),  the aquarium and the civil rights museum are but we just took some pictures of the outside. I think we've covered a lot of civil rights ground in the past couple of weeks.

After that we just wandered about the downtown taking pictures and being roasting. We stopped at the park at 5 Points which has a big water feature that a few people were doing graduation pictures at. There was also a super buff guy wearing only shorts doing press ups on his knuckles.

A quick stop at Starbucks (the first of the holiday) to cool down then we hopped back in the car. We headed to Little 5 Points which is a hipster/alternative area in the East of the city - I twin it with the Haight in San Francisco. There was lots of cool graffiti and lots of hipsters but also a decent number of homeless. We went to an amazing music/comic shop called Criminal Records and spent quite a lot of time browsing. We (mostly K) bought a few books including a Biff to the Future comic (Back to the Future series).  We were going to go to a coffee shop after that but it was closed so we went to the pizza place next door and sat outside to enjoy the sunshine. We shared a slice of white pizza but it was so big we couldn't finish it! Mental.

Finally it was time to head to the airport and we gave ourselves plenty of time cos it was rush hour and Atlanta traffic is famously crazy but it was super smooth and we arrived at the car hire return much quicker than expected. The car hire return was also super quick so we got to the airport earlier than we thought we would. Security was also really quick,  barely any queue at all.

We're chilling in the food court now and I had a fried peach hand pie as my final American food and it was delightful! K then decided she wanted one and there were none left - oops!

So we leave in 90 mins (2215) and get back to Glasgow at 1430 tomorrow. I really hope I manage to fly on the flight but I'm not hopeful.

So that's it - 2136 miles, $142.80 of petrol (about 6.6 cents a mile),  9 states and 17 days!

See you in the UK y'all!