MARTA Wisked Me from Airport to Downtown

Last night I took the MARTA subway/light rail all the way from Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport to my hotel at CNN Center downtown. The total cost was just $2.25. We passed by factories and graffiti-scared warehouses, and nearly everyone on the train was black.

I wondered though, why the hosts of this show didn’t mention MARTA as an option…they instead pointed me to a $28 airport shuttle service. I didn’t have to walk that far and the whole trip was pretty nice.

I ventured down to the big cocktail party and scoped out my surroundings. It’s always a little unnerving walking into a big swarm of people with nametags and not having your own, since registration had closed. But I met up with a Travel Ad Network executive, and then a guy who worked for a travel insurance company, and then listened in a conversation about Facebook and Twitter and jumped in…I told him how much I’ve gotten out of the latter.

Later we all walked down Marietta Street to a very slick bar with a rooftop deck that had two gas fire pits. It was Google’s party, and a jazz quartet made good music while I chatted with a woman who sold Google ads. “Why don’t you guys bring the Ad sense people, who work with publishers?” I asked. She said they aren’t organized into categories like travel, so it’s not as easy as rounding up the sales force. Then I met Roger Dow who told me about chatting up Obama.

On the way back to my hotel, I was approached by a seedy looking black guy, who wanted to get a donation. I stepped up my pace and made it to the safety of the Omni with the other blazer-wearing party goers ahead of me.