Choose Your Style
brianhelge.com [blog]

Atlanta (Friday)

Aug 1, 2005
This was our first big day out in the city. Once we woke up from the night before, we headed out to the heart of tourist Atlanta. Here within a half mile of everything, we saw the World of Coca-Cola, the capitol building, the CNN tour and Olympic Park. First stop was the World of Coca-Cola:

This was a pretty good self-paced tour. They must have every single Coke artifact that was ever made right here in Atlanta. Three stories tall, and filled to the brim with posters, signs and bottles. It was here where I finally broke my 3 year long vow. I finally drank pop again. I used to be hooked on the stuff, and I really didn't have a reason for quitting to drink the product, so I figured if I was at the main Coke plant, I could splurge just once here.


You could also sample Coke from around the world here, and uncle Matt said not to drink the one from Italy. So what do you do when someone tells you this? You drink the one from Italy! It was HORRIBLE!


After the Coke tour, we walked around to the CNN tour. On the way, we saw a huge building that didn't look like anything else, and I told Christi I thought it was the Capitol Building. Since I took pictures of it, I wanted to know what it was, so Christi and I went in and asked the guy at the front desk. He confirmed my suspicion, we took a picture outside, and headed off to the CNN tour.



Once we got inside the massive CNN Center, Christi's recollection of her childhood hit her and said that this is where she stayed when they danced in Atlanta. And if I don't mind saying, a pretty nice place to stay. We'll get to a better place in a second or two....
So we went on the tour, and saw exactly how CNN is broadcasted across the nation. We even learned that CNN En Espanol is broadcasted here as well. Sorry for no pictures, but they were pretty adamant that you kept the lens on your camera at all times. Just like at the World of Coca-Cola, they dumped us off in the gift shop, and we were on our way. Right out the door was Olympic Park:

This must've been quite some place in '96 when they had the Olympics here. It was not that amazing in '05 though. It was cool and all, but it was just wide open spaces with grass and fountains here and there.

After our long day of site-seeing, we decided to go back to the hotel and cool down. On the way back, we passed the hotel that I wanted to stay at, and the hotel that I will stay at the next time that I come. The Westin Peachtree Hotel:



The humidity was absolutely horrible down there. If you haven't noticed, in ever single picture, my hair is wet from sweat. The weather never got over 86°, and we never saw the sun once, seriously, no joke. It was good, because with the mid 80's weather, and the high humidity, it was hotter there than any day in Nebraska so far, and we've had a couple triple digit days!

We made our way back downtown and ate at a great Italian Pizza place called Baraonda's. We had a great pizza there that rivaled Yai Yai's and it was only $8! By far our cheapest meal there.



Once we got back to the Sheraton and cleaned up, and it was time to leave we got our tickets and took the Braves Shuttles off to the highlight of the trip, Turner Field:



Forget Iowa, this was my field of dreams. After watching Braves games since '93 and at Turner Field since '96, I was finally here. All of the images on television were finally right in front of me. Right as I write this, I'm watching the game on TV, and I can see everything there that we just saw a couple of days ago. And they just said that Rafael Palmeiro got suspended for steriods! Anyways, the field was everything that I thought it could be, and from looking at our tickets, we had amazing seats. We were only 13 rows up from Chipper! It was amazing to see Chipper up close and in person. And just for me, Chipper had the game winning 2 rbi single for us to watch a thrilling 2-1 Braves victory over the Pirates. After the game, we took the shuttle back and got some food and drink.



The place we wanted to go to was closed, and done selling beer at 11:00 p.m.! Yeah, what a joke. So we went to the Hard Rock that was 2 blocks from our hotel for a late night dinner.

0 Comments | Post URL (#)