Today, the three older kids and I left the napping twins at home and went to check out Ponce City Market.
Ponce City Market (hereafter PCM) is located in a massive building (2 million sqft) that used to be a Sears and Roebuck store, warehouse, and regional office (from 1926 to 1979). It was then used by City Hall for various purposes. Ultimately, it was sold to an investment group that repurposed it.
It now contains a bougie mall (no H&M or Claire’s here) and food court (again, no sbarro or subway allowed… they’re far too pedestrian). It also has offices, apartments, and a small amusement park on the roof (though I actually only learned that now, as I am writing this post. ¯\_(ツ)_/ Oh well, what do ya do? Sorry kids. I didn’t know!)
The building itself is seriously cool, they preserved a lot of the character of the place, including 400,000 sqft of the original flooring: maple tongue and groove. And they left a lot of the industrial features in place. Naturally, there were plenty of shiny new elements as well. All together it produced such a cool vibe.
Another one of the cool things about PCM is that the Atlanta Beltline actually goes through the market, which was pretty dang cool.
We wandered through a couple of stores and we found a few small souvenirs: (stickers and keychains.)
So, yeah, overall this is a really cool spot. Lots to see. But I think we suffered from some mistaken expectations: mine and the kids. I thought it would be a little more interesting to the kids than it actually was. And to be honest, beyond the cool building, it was a mall. A mall that was catered to young professionals, not families. I think I had been expecting more of a Pike Place Market vibe: with a farmer’s market, street performers, etc.
So, hoping to find something more kid-friendly nearby, I pulled out TripAdvisor. And it turned out that we were super close to another spot on my list: the Historic Fourth Ward Park (The Old Fourth ward is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city). It was .2 miles away according to my phone. So we made our way over in that direction.
And I can now say without a doubt that here seems to be a strong nuclear force between my children and bodies of water. The moment they saw the fountain at the entrance, they were all over it. Literally. (The four fundamental forces govern interactions between matter. Strongest to weakest they are: 1. the strong nuclear force, 2. the electromagnetic force, 3. the weak nuclear force and 4. gravity. Please note that I chose the strongest force to describe the attraction between my children and water.)
Also, the .2 mile walk overheated the boys, and they promptly lost their shirts. Poor little Seattleite yams. To be fair, they were wearing close-toed shoes, long-sleeve shirts and (as they call them) ‘long-sleeve pants.’ (Note: It was 75 degrees F)
After they splashed around in the fountain, we made our way down to the pond. And if there had not been signs prohibiting them from playing in the water, they would have been in that pond in a millisecond.
We saw a couple of koi, and got to see some ducks hanging out. And then we decided to walk around the pond. It has a great walkway that goes all the way around the pond. The walkway goes over the pond in a few spots, and as we were standing there, looking down at the water, all the ducks started making their way over to us. And a bunch of minnows. And THEN a bunch of turtles showed up too!! It was awesome.
In one particular spot, there were probably 20 turtles. Pretty sure they are used to getting fed and that is the only reason they’d have anything to do with us. We had a great time watching them.
We continued walking around. And the mountain goats kids found things to climb on.
Eventually, we made our way back to the Ponce city market, to get a treat. We opted for Gelato. Cause you know, everyone was feeling pretty hot. It was delightful gelato.
And it was the perfect end to our little adventure.
