Falcons stadium (The Georgia Dome) is about middle of the road as far as stadiums go. Parking access is excellent (well except for all the construction in the area) and access to the stadium from parking is quick and easy. We had club level seats in the Verizon Club. The club is nothing special and actually fairly poor as far as clubs go. Concession choices are minimal, hotdogs, hamburgers, tacos, nachos, bbq pork and loaded mac and cheese (mac and cheese with bbq pork or chicken). Food quality was fairly poor and seating was limited to a few small tables and basic metal legged hard chairs. Seats in the stadium were basic and sight lines were good. This was a classic type of stadium with all the seats getting farther and farther from the playing field as the stands go back. Newer stadiums go higher quickly instead of farther back which may be why the Falcons are building a new stadium right next door. This is also why there is so much construction in the area. All in all the stadium was not bad, not great and falls right in the middle of the pack as far as stadiums we have seen thus far are concerned.
Now on to the fun stuff. Bears fans - Bears Fans Everywhere. At the start of the game the stadium was probably 20-25% empty, which is very strange given it was the late afternoon game on a Sunday. We have come to expect that kind of lack of on time crowds from Thursday and Monday games and sometimes from the early game on Sunday, but never the later game. Ultimately the stands ended up filling in midway through the first quarter and on into the second quarter finally ending up at about 10% empty. Then of course they started emptying out again, but we will have more on that in a moment. But the Bears Fans were there from the start. Loud and Proud and determined to make life as a Falcon as difficult as possible. The crowd was loud. I dare say we were close to as loud as the Falcons fans during most of the game and FAR FAR louder come the fourth quarter. I think Jay Cutler may have summed it up best "I'm almost positive that we had more Bears fans than Falcons fans there. I'm serious. Atlanta was in silent count. We were both on silent [count]. They were in silent count like [in the] second quarter. I saw [Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan] him kicking. I was like, 'What the hell is he doing?' Then I realized it's loud in here."
Yep that was us Loud and Loving it. Hey let me brag a bit. It is not often you get the home team to have to take a time out because of the noise the visiting team's fans are making.
The game itself was great, the presence of so many Bear's fans to enjoy it with was icing on the cake.
Somewhere around half time the Falcon fans started leaving. Not sure why that was as their team was not that out of the game Well not yet anyway. By the mid third quarter it was a stream, by the end of the third quarter a torrent. It slowed down in the fourth quarter. It had to. They were running out of fans in the stadium. At this point there were about 80% Bears fans and 20% Falcon fans. We were shouting and chanting our fool heads off. I only hope that some portion of the noise made it through to the viewers at home. Certainly the team seemed to appreciate it. I mean how often do you get to see visiting team defensive lineman urging on the crowd to make more noise.
Leaving the stadium was about as easy as you can imagine. Of course at that point over half the stadium had already cleared the roads and it was only a few hapless Falcon fans and a rowdy group of happy Bears fans left.
We tried to go to one of the restaurants in the area, but they were only serving a limited bar menu. All the other places were packed and so we headed back towards the RV. The Coach found a restaurant out that way called Son of a Greek. So that is where we headed. I will give you a foreshadowing of what is to come. The Coach is no longer allowed to select restaurants. She had selected the Varsity and now this one. Two strikes and she is out of the running for any more selections. I don't think my digestion will survive a third strike.
Son of a Greek is set up like a sports bar with many TVs. The staff there spent the better part of 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get the TVs turned to the Sunday night game. This is after we spent 10 minutes or so trying to explain that we meant football, NFL football, professional football. The game that is on every Sunday night. That game. Eventually they understood that it was not the replay of the college game that we wanted. And that if they did not turn off the Rap music that was blaring from the speakers that we would not be able to hear the game.
Son of a Greek has about 4 "Greek" items listed on the menu. They mostly serve Italian food and Pizza. Apparently the Coach guessed correctly because the chicken alfredo was only bad. And that mad it the best dish we ordered. The Gyro platter was served with tomatoes that past their prime the week before and onions that were halfway fermented enough to be wine. The pizza was thin/thick crusted. On one side the pizza had a thin crust. On the other it was close to half an inch thick. And somehow they managed to cook this without making the thin side crisp. The toppings of the meat lovers pizza might have been meat, the cheese probably was not derived from any dairy product and the sauce needed to improve to make it to really bad.
But we were in a good enough mood that even this disaster of a meal could not dampen our moods.
The next morning we aimed the RV for home so we could get there to watch this weeks trouncing of Miami. Then next week it is off to New England for the last of the road games we will be going to this year. The last three road games are against the Packers, Vikings and Lions and we have been to those stadiums before so we won't be going back to them until the Vikings build their new stadium and we can see the Bears beat them there.
As a footnote, the drive back from Atlanta was a nightmare. Rain, Storms, Tornados and more Rain. At least it provided a distraction from all the construction.
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