After 3 months back at school (since Christmas break) it was definitely time for a mini-vacation, especially since I got an extra day off this weekend for Easter. AJ and I looked at a map to figure out where we could drive in a day. Unlike in Seattle, where there are limited options, St. Louis has many. Last year we drove to New Orleans for q weekend trip, this year we chose Atlanta. We got a great deal on a hotel (a Marriott for $67/night!) and so we headed out yesterday.
Today, we explored some of downtown: Underground Atlanta which is basically a shopping mall, but it’s under the roads. It seemed like it could be cool, but it was so packed with people that it just wasn’t as much fun as we would have liked. We has lunch there in the food court, then headed over to the World of Coca-Cola. See, Coke has it’s roots in Atlanta so they built a nice tourist-trap museum with lots of historical tidbits, paraphenilia, videos, and ads from around the world. They had a old-fashioned soda fountain where a soda jerk demonstrated how a Coca-Cola was prepared back in the old days. There was also a tasting room with coke products sold around the world. Sadly, there were no Australian products (so no Lift 🙁 ), but there was a really disgusting one from Italy called "Beverly". I heard from a tour guide guy that it is flavored with quinine, which is a plant used to make malaria medication. It definitely had a medicinal taste. Ugh. After we were done at the World of Coca-Cola (complete with a T-shirt purchase) we walked over to the CNN Center, which by the way has a much awesomer food court and is where we will be heading for lunch tomorrow I think. Anyway, we plan to take the studio tour on Saturday, so we just took a quick look around the building then crossed the street to the Centennial Olympic Park. There was a fountain show in the middle of the park, which really is the only thing there. I played in the water a bit to cool off 9it was 82 degrees!). Then we came back to the hotel for a swim and a soak in the hot tub before heading to the Outback for dinner. Then we finished off the evening with room service dessert (creme brulee and Haagen Daas Chocolate ice cream) and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason".
Tomorrow is the CNN Studio Tour and who knows what else… we’ll have to see what strikes our fancy.