My wife and I flew down to Atlanta (from Chicago) for the day on 10/6/12. As I often like to do when departing early from O'hare, we stayed the night before at the O'hare Hilton, which is great for 6am-8am departures. You can just wake up, get ready, and walk across the tunnel to the terminal. It beats waking up even earlier and fighting traffic! If you have the chance request the highest floor possible and will get amazing airport veiws all stay. I've stayed on the 4th floor before and you can't really see much, try to get 6th floor on up.

Our view from the 10th floor could see part of United's Terminal 1, runway 14/32 departures, Terminal 2, and the American Eagle portion of American's Terminal 3, as well as two of the three ATC towers, and part of Terminal 3. Here you can see the United 737 at B2, a United Express ERJ behind it, as well as the last Delta departure of the day from the E concourse.

Here is all the way to the left, you can see both towers, as well as part of terminal 3. I like this shot, how it shows the curvature of the hotel, as you can see it's famous red neon stripe near the top.

In this one you can see our aircraft parked at E15, the Delta 757 in the center of the shot.

Same 757 waiting to board:

View from onboard the aircraft looking back at the hotel we were in only 20 minutes prior

View from our seats 17A & B, of the leading edge of the left wing as well as the #1 Pratt & Whitney PW-2040 engine of this former Northwest Airlines 757, as we decend into Georgia.

On the ground taxiing to the A concourse, always a lot of action at the world's busiest airport

Nice shot of a Delta MD-88 pushing back as well as nine other Delta jets

More A Concourse action as well pul into our gate

This MD-88 readies herself for a trip to Detroit

After arriving in Atlanta, we took a cab over to the Delta Heritage Museum where the Atlanta Airline Collectable show was happening. When you walk in the hangar you can't help but be taken by how awesome the 767 "Spirit of Delta" is.

The Spirit of Delta is very well preserved, and is well worth any trip to Atlanta

As well as the 767 they also have a really nice looking DC-3 among other aircraft at the museum:

The Atlanta Airline Collectable Show, 10/6/2012

Downtown Atlanta as seen from the World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium

If you ever have a layover in Atlanta or fly there, I recomend eating at the Chili's on the upper level of the A concourse. The reason being a great view that offers some unique spotting, the gate where this MD-88 is, is usually occupied by a 767 everytime I've been there and was just before I took this shot!

While waiting out our departure, I think we saw nearly every type in Delta's fleet roll by! A330 to Amsterdam:

737-700 to Panama City, FLA

A319

A 777-200ER heading for maintenance

757-200

MD-88

A 767-300w taking off

Finally our 757 back to Chicago arrived, another former Northwest bird, 550NW.

I was surprised to read on the internet this aircraft while with Northwest was side swiped by a Northwest A319 whose maintenance worker gave too much power. The A319's wing sliced a gash in the side of the 757 just under this set of windows. This 757 was delivered in June of 2001, a relatively new 757!