Atlanta Trip

Wow, it's been a while! I guess with parents and lots of other relatives recently signing up on facebook, I feel like everyone already knows what we're up to and can see our pictures there. But nonetheless, I am really going to make a better effort in updating our blog. We've been doing well, we had a good summer (and first half of fall...) but instead of filling everything in that I've missed, I'll just pick up where we are now.
Last week we took a trip to Atlanta since Jamie had an extra day off for Veteran's Day, and because we kept saying we wanted to go see the new aquarium all summer. We finally made the trip, it was a nice little getaway for us! We bought the CityPass, which I would highly recommend, at least for ATL, it includes admission to six attractions.
First we went to the Zoo, which of course was fun.

There were tons of parakeets and you could feed them. Jamie liked making new friends, but I wasn't too fond of them flying around my head.
After the zoo, we went to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. We had the option of going here or the botanical garden, we chose this one because heavy rain was moving in the forecast (leftover from Hurricane Ida) and the garden wasn't open on Mondays. It was interesting but dead animals aren't usually as fun as live ones!
Once we were done there, we met an old friend/former co-worker of Jamie's for a coffee to catch up, since he was coincidentally in Atlanta that evening. Then we headed down to take a tour of the FAA Atlanta Center, which is a little different than the air traffice control centers at the airports. The "Center" handles the enroute air traffic, basically meaning very high altitudes and airspace that is not controlled by local airports.
After our busy day, we made our way back to the place we were staying. We were lucky enough to be able to stay with Henry and Ellen, who are some family friends of Jamie's. It was neat there because it felt like a small, established town with a sense of community, yet it was so convenient and we could walk to the MARTA rail station. Very nice!

Tuesday, we got up and made our way (in the rain) to the CNN Center for a studio tour. Unfortunately, we missed seeing Robin Meade on her Morning Express show by about 20 minutes, but it was still very neat to see everyone working behind the scenes.


From there we made our way to the Georgia Aquarium where we had "a whale of a time"! (Sorry... couldn't resist) We spent a good portion of the day here, there was a lot to see. It is the largest aquarium in the world, so naturally it has the largest fish in the world, the whale shark.




To finish out our rainy Tuesday, we made our way to The World of Coca-Cola. This was very fun as well, and a good way to finish off the day.



Finally at the end of the tour, we got to sample lots of products from around the world, and most importantly, a Coca-Cola Classic. After spending so much time looking at, reading about, hearing about it, a coke had never tasted so good as that one! I'm sure it wasn't a coincidence. We drank our fill (and I paid for it later with a bubbly tummy) and called it a day.

We headed back to "home base" and got into some dry clothes (we were soaked from trying to find our way to the MARTA so we could get home!) so we could go grab a bite to eat. We went to a place called The Watershed, and let's just say it was a little different than we expected, but nonetheless, it was tasty and we had some food in our stomachs. We stayed up chatting with our nice hosts, and called it a night.

Last but not least, we had one more stop on our way out of town on Wednesday morning. We went to check out the Atlanta History Center which was interesting and there was a lot to look at. We did tour the Swan House on the property, which was very pretty. We didn't make it through the whole museum, but we had to start our trek back at some point. All in all, we had a nice couple of fun-filled days together and it was a great way to spend a long weekend!