Never Say Never Again

Seriously, when we backslide we do it in a big way. Next year will be a huge one for us with big new adventures! I think that we'll have to do standalone blogs for the 2 semi-long cruises we have planned for next year. Again, all a long way off, but here is a photo hint for you. It looks like we'll finally be making it to 2 faraway places that we've never been before. Very exciting times...

Not too far down the road...

Clay & a big pile of ribs

is an excellent and venerable restaurant. We made a short trip over there on our 26th Wedding Anniversary this week. We'd like to thank our neighbors Paula, Trevor and Jeremy for the gift card that made our visit to The Angus Barn possible! We loved it!

Never Say Never

Well, just when I start a blog of running small trips, we finally plan a big one. Don't panic; it is a long ways off yet and we'll have plenty of time to take smaller trips beforehand. Though in all honesty with American Dance Festival in Durham over the summer, we'll be staying pretty close to home all summer! I will have to decide once we've gone on the big trip whether to do a separate blog for it as I've done for others or to integrate it here. Time will tell so stay tuned...

Anyway, I won't tell any specifics about the big trip yet, except to give you this clue.

Atlanta, the end

Photos

We were both up before sunrise on Sunday. Worried about getting out with the Atlanta Marathon going on. You could see thousands of runners out our window. From the Publix Atlanta Marathon website, it looked like we were going to be landlocked! Clay was up and showered first and he went out to see about bringing back breakfast and if he could ask someone about driving out of the parking garage and away. I showered and made coffee and worked on packing up. Clay came back in a bit of a panic and said we need to leave now. So, after the race had started but before dawn we left the Hilton Garden Inn. I had called in for express checkout and left a voice mail message. The instructions for express checkout were to leave keycards in your room or in a basket at the front desk on your way out. But, I thought we had to have a keycard to exit the garage. Clay thought that all keycards should be left behind and a garage attendant could let us out. I kept my keycard and a good thing because there were no employees working in the garage that we could find, nor any signage indicating how to exit. I drove past a cone going the wrong way and drove a half block to a police woman working a gap in the barricades. She pointed us out to the left and off we went. We zigzagged our way around downtown with u-turns, etc. trying to find a spot ahead of the runners to get out of the race route. After about 15 minutes and the sun rising, we finally got ahead of the pack and got out. We turned back in the direction of the zoo, now needing to kill a couple of hours and started looking for a place to park it and eat some breakfast. We found an open Krispy Kreme with Hot Doughnuts Now in neon, and while that would have been fun and interesting to compare to ours at home because it looked identical, we didn't think we could spend much time there and really didn't feel like doughnuts. A bit further on we found an open IHOP and pulled in. Clay ordered the Senior 2x2x2 and lamented the absence of hash browns, though he wouldn't take any of mine and I had way too many. I saw Eggs Benedict on the menu and that just sounded perfect to me even though I always get pancakes at IHOP. I liked IHOP's Eggs Benedict and thought they did a pretty good job on them and in the end I had some of Clay's pancakes. We almost forgot to take a photo of our food!

We killed as much time as possible at IHOP and then we set off early towards the zoo thinking to stop in at Oakland Cemetery to kill some more time. We could have spent much more time in Oakland! It was a beautiful cemetery, a few years older than our Oakwood Cemetery, smaller but lots more money in theirs than ours.

We set off again for the zoo trying to approach from a different direction to get to the parking lots we saw right in front of the entrance. We found it easily enough and got a parking spot on the front row! We got in line behind about 7 other people with advance tickets or zoo memberships and stood waiting for 9:30am opening. We still wound up entering behind people who started out behind us in line and without tickets, so go figure. Zoo Atlanta handed out nice maps with the day's schedule of events listed on the back. Oddly enough, Po on 1 hour display was not listed, but they just started that on 3/11 so maybe they have had a chance to print new maps up. We also did not find any Po merchandise which sorely disappointed me! I guess Po is just too new yet! Anyway, we made our way straight back to the panda exhibit to look for Po. That is all we did look for Po. He was buried under his mom's bamboo and sound asleep. She was an eating machine on that big pile of bamboo and slowly uncovered him, but he stayed asleep. Oh well, we saw Po! (Click the link at the left to see our video of Po and Mom. Back arrow should return you here to the blog when done viewing. Sorry we did not get a good still photo of Po.) I am looking at the PandaCam now over a week later and Po is out and active and in the same public viewing room where he was only out an hour every morning when we saw him. It is afternoon now! I guess the other reason Zoo Atlanta has printed up public viewing info on Po is that it is still constantly changing. Oh well.

The weather on Sunday was very different from Friday and Saturday. It was cooler and overcast, but no rain. So, it was still nice. Zoo Atlanta is pretty small and compact, so we took the rest of the morning and wandered it all before heading out of town between 11 and noon. We watched some orangutans playing tag, along with some monkeys and apes. But, here is video of Orangutan Tag (click the link!).

Man, the signage for the interstate was crazy! We saw one to I-85/I-75 pulling out of the parking lot and followed it and the others all over downtown Atlanta, but they would never give a sign to actually turn on an entrance ramp so we kept missing it! Finally, I saw a street saw that was something like I-85 Entrance Ramp Road or something and I pulled a quick turn on it and onto a highway while we looked for additional signs to tell us where we were. It turned out OK and we were on our way.

Clay started surfing the Internet on his phone after we were well into SC. He finally picked a place outside Charlotte, NC called Bubba's. Now for those of you who know NC barbeque, you know that there is a pretty firm geographical divide between Eastern Style and Western or Lexington Style Q. Well, weirdly enough here in the heart of Lexington barbeque land, Bubba's specializes in Eastern Style Q. So, that is the exit we started looking for and found around 3pm. I had a chicken white meat quarter with slaw and baked beans. Clay had the Q combo plate with slaw and potato salad. The hush puppies had onions in them! Yuck! We skipped dessert. Clay had to ask for another to go box. We added it to the little cooler sack I had improvised in the trunk with a ziplock bag of ice and a frozen bottle of water. One other fun thing here was the photos around the dining room of people with or in Bubba Shirt T-shirts around the world. After seeing those Clay had to get a T-shirt with its very visible giant font. He also bought a giant apron! Also, last meal and we completely forgot to get a photo of the food!

We had one more stop for oil for the car once we figured out that was the light that kept going on and off on the dash. We were home by 5pm. End of Atlanta road trip!

Photos

Atlanta, the middle

Photos

Sorry the photos are in completely random order! I couldn't find any way to organize them properly.

After me getting not much sleep last night, I finally got up and in the shower between 6am and 6:30am. Clay was still snoring away. I knew we had to be at the GA Aquarium at 9am for our timed entry tickets and if I finally went to sleep now, I wouldn't be awake until then. So, I got an early start. I made coffee and had it in the room while Clay got off to a slow start. I could have made hot tea in the room as well with the supplies provided and that most certainly would have helped Clay's head cold/sore throat but he wouldn't have any.


About 7:20am we went out looking for breakfast. There was a $15pp or so buffet on the 4th floor of our hotel, but we had a look and just weren't that hungry. We went on out through the lobby and across the street and 2 doors down found a Subway and a coffee/ice cream shop both open. So, Danish or breakfast sandwiches? I chose Subway. We picked our ingredients and got our garnished egg white omelet/English muffins to go. We took them back to the room and had them with our now chilled short souvenir Coca-Colas. Cleaned up the room, brushed our teeth again and headed out again to the GA Aquarium. Oh, I should mention here that Atlanta Segway Tours was only another couple of doors down. That would have been a cool thing to reserve if I had known about it. We picked up a brochure and the prices were about the same as in Raleigh.

There were self-service kiosks outside the Georgia Aquarium. Since we were outside before they opened that would have been doable vs. ordering online in advance. But, with the huge crowds at everything we did in Atlanta (outside of the Cyclorama!) I would still be leery. If I had known that we would be there for half the day on Friday, and that it was going to be beautiful weather etc., we could have purchased an Atlanta City Pass or a combo ticket and saved some money, just FYI for future visitors. But, we just had $24.95pp general admission tickets. There are lots of other levels of visit to the GA that you can buy for behind the scenes tours, 3D movies, diving in the tanks, etc. We just wanted to look at our own pace from the public side of the tanks. Anyway, we got our tickets scanned and our photograph taken and then we got packed in the lobby to wait for the rope drop. Again, glad to have gotten in early and glad to be done and ready to leave by the time the crowds got unbearable. When we purchased online, I was given the option to download a free audio tour of the aquarium or could pay for one when we got there. I downloaded it. We tried to visit the aquarium using the audio tour, but it was scrambled and not flowing well through the building. Also, there were staffers everywhere with microphones giving all kinds of talks and information in each section and it was competing audio, so we gave that up. I am glad we didn't pay anything for an audio tour! But, just an FYI for future visitors, don't bother. Interacting with the staff is going to be much more rewarding. About the time we were ready to leave, Clay was ready for a drink. They had finally opened the cafe/snack bar area by now and he wanted to head over there. I convinced him to wait for lunch. So, after browsing the gift shop as exiting we headed uphill through Centennial Olympic Park to Googie Burger. We found a T-shirt on sale for Clay and a blown glass seahorse wine bottle stopper for me that matches our dinnerware.

To sum up, I guess the Georgia Aquarium was impressive! I guess I am just not an aquarium girl. I got motion sick waiting in the lobby to enter. We were surrounded by 2 schools of fish traveling by continuously. I had to sit down and take another meclizine and put on my sea bands before we got inside the aquarium proper. Once in there it was fine. The only other place I was iffy was on a moving sidewalk through and below the big main tank. So, it was a pretty amazing place, but just not my cup of tea. I am not sure what Clay thought of it. He seemed ready to leave before I was though. So, I guess he didn't love it either. I think the main problem was that although they gave us a big map of the place as we walked in, it did not have a schedule of events, feedings, etc. listed. You had to enter each area and view a monitor there to find out when and where their events were taking place and some times things were really nonevents. Anyway, between that and the scrambled audio tour, it made the visit more chaotic and disorganized than even the massive hordes did and we just didn't enjoy it that much.

Googie Burger wound up only about a block away at the Centennial Olympic Park Visitor's Center Building. It was walk up ordering, with a pick up window on the other side of the building and lots of tables and chairs around outside. It was such a beautiful day that it was a very pleasant way to have lunch. We both got our burgers without the special sauce, so all I can say is that we both liked our burgers. They were served on some kind of egg bread rolls. The french fries were better than The Varsity's but still not to our liking. The shakes were very, very thick and delicious. I had PB&J and Clay had peach. In case, like me, you are curious about the name Googie, it refers to the style of architecture of the building!

Clay wanted a nap now. I wanted to visit the Atlanta Cyclorama before it closed at 4:30pm. I was not averse to a nap. We had checked the free HBO schedule in our room yesterday and the premiere of Pee Wee's Playhouse on Broadway was airing tonight at 10pm. That was going to mean a late night for me after no sleep last night. We walked back to the Hilton Garden Inn to drop off our bag from the GA Aquarium and to look at a map before deciding naps or Cyclorama. When we got there around 2:30pm after being out since 8:30am, we found that it looked exactly as it had when we left it. Meaning with the fitted sheet off the 2 top corners! We did not spot any housekeeping carts in the vicinity. So, that decided it. We used the bathroom and headed out again.

It was only about a 15 minute drive to Grant Park which is where both the Zoo and the Cyclorama are located. We lucked into a free parking spot right in front of an entrance to the park and walked down. There were long lines at the zoo and we were worried about tomorrow looking at them. Po (Zoo Atlanta's new baby panda is on public display for 1 hour daily from 9:30am to 10:30am. The zoo opens at 9:30am! So, we did not want to be waiting in a ticket line tomorrow morning on our way to see Po before leaving town!) We decided to look again on our way back out of the park. We went into the Cyclorama and bought 2 adult tickets at $10 each. It turns out that while the museum part is self-guided, the Cyclorama part is timed groups! We arrived about 30 seconds after the movie started and they let us slip in to some empty seats down front. The film was about the Battle of Atlanta, which is the subject of the Cyclorama as well. After the film, they herded us together down a narrow hall and up a narrow flight of stairs to the Cyclorama Theater. It was awesome! There is a giant painting surrounding a giant round room, with about 15-20 feet of forced perspective diorama in front of the painting. The visitors are seated in steeply tiered stadium seating on a rotating platform! There is recorded narration, music, sound and lighting effects as you slowly turn to see the entire thing. When the recorded presentation was finished, a live narrator came in and turned us around once more with stops and starts as he shone a flashlight to point things out to us. We had about 5-10 minutes after that to walk around the seating area to look again at the whole thing. It was just amazing! The soldier figures ranged from just over 4 feet tall to just over 12 inches tall. You really had to look to tell about the foreshortening scale. We wandered the rest of the museum as the busload we had gotten mixed in with got rounded up and reloaded their bus. We realized that we had parked pretty far away in Grant Park from the attractions and made a mental note to find a different approach back tomorrow. But, the good news was that the way we had come we had finally seen a CVS with a surface parking lot that Clay needed to visit on the way back ASAP. When we came out the lines at the zoo were very short, so we got in line and waited to buy advance tickets to come back in the morning. We bought 2 adults tickets with our $3 off pp coupon from the Atlanta map we picked up yesterday on I-85. Our total was $38.86 and we got tickets valid until 09/18/2011. We'll be back tomorrow!

We drove back the way we came and stopped at the CVS and bought Clay more Benadryl since he didn't pack enough with him. He also bought a 2-liter Diet Coke since it was less that a .5 liter from the cooler. We have ice and a fridge back at the room. We were now both hot and sweaty and looking forward to a shower and a nap back at the room. Well, you might imagine that when we got back to the room after 4:30pm it had still not been serviced by housekeeping. We tried to phone the front desk to request it be serviced now, but no one ever answered the phone during a 15 minute period. We got out of there again and headed downstairs as 2 fairly unhappy campers. Clay stopped a maid with a cart as she exited a room about 12 doors down from ours. He asked her about getting our room serviced today, and when it might happen so we could schedule the remaining daylight hours... She pretty much snapped at him that she was doing what 1 woman could do and she'd get to it when she could. Now that was wrong, but I'm sure she was having a hard day and it was probably no more her fault than ours. But... a man in a green uniform with a walkie-talkie appeared out of the elevator lobby and overheard the last of the exchange. We heard him tell her as we left that she couldn't speak to us like that and to go clean our room immediately. Clay did tell her our number, he caught us before the elevator left and asked us our room number, apologized and said she would go clean it now. We headed on downstairs. I stood in line to register my complaint to management. Clay took a sofa in the lobby. It was hot and crowded and very noisy in there. They had a popcorn machine in there during the day. Clay got some the afternoon we arrived, other than that it sat with a few unpopped kernels in the bottom the rest of the time we saw it. I was bummed because I was hoping to score some popcorn to watch Pee Wee with later tonight. About cocktail hour, they take away the popcorn machine and replace it with peanut butter cookies. They are pretty good. But, there is something about the smell of popcorn that is addictive, and that's especially cruel when you can't have any! After about 15-20 minutes, it was my turn in line at the front desk. I drew a young woman from Kyrgyzstan. We had a bit of a language barrier. But, she did radio housekeeping and tell me while they were short staffed our room was being serviced now. No apologies for the inconvenience or ETA on when we could get back in the room. I mean if the woman up there had actually gone to our room when we left her, she should have been finished by now since we had been gone about 30 minutes at that point! The man working next to her was the one who checked us in yesterday and he must have been listening because he took me from her and we started again with what is the problem. He did apologize and acknowledged that we did not pay to come here and deal with the Hilton's staffing issues and the least he could do was offer us a cold beverage while we waited. Although he could not offer us a cold beverage in a cool, quiet space as I requested. He took us to the "Pantry" off the lobby. This is like a tiny convenience store where they sell snacks. We looked in here this morning hoping for microwave breakfasts, but there were none. Only microwave dinners. Anyway, during the course of the day, the coolers had been emptied out! He was happy to find a few bottles on ice in 2 rolling stand up display tubs since he had offered cold drinks. Clay got a juice (he had put his 2-liter Diet Coke in our fridge upstairs while we were up there) and I got another Coke. We sat on sofas in the lobby while we waited for the man to notify us that our room was ready. We got in there a little after 5pm. Clay had taken more Benadryl with his juice and he went directly to sleep. I was afraid if I went to sleep now, I would sleep til 10pm and we would miss going out for dinner. We had plans to go to Mary Mac's Tea Room for dinner.


Clay slept until about 7pm when I rousted him to go now or never since Mary Mac's closes at 9pm. We got there during probably their busiest moment and their rear parking lot was full. We circled around and found a street spot with a $2 per hour meter on it. We did not have any quarters. We had to go in and put our name on the list and get 8 quarters and hope we would be back out in an hour. Clay ordered the full slab of ribs with collards and stewed okra and cracklin' bread. I ordered the vegetable plate. Only in the South! Gotta love it. I had macaroni & cheese, Brunswick stew, chicken dumplings (no chicken) and squash casserole. Now we know if we came back, Clay would only get the 1/2 rack. I would not get the mac & cheese or the squash casserole. I would get 1 fried chicken breast with the dumplings and maybe the Brunswick stew, or just the chicken and dumplings. I ordered the assorted breads which included the cracklin' as well as yeast rolls and cinnamon rolls. The cracklin' bread was small cornbread muffins with pieces of pork skin in them! Vegetarians should be very cautious in the South! Up front the the waitress brought us complimentary appetizers of pot likker with cracklin' bread! This was listed on the menu at $2.25 for the cup size which is probably what she brought us. We were surprised. Clay ate mine! He liked it. He said it was very hot (heat) and made his head and throat feel better. Duh! Still not having any hot tea from the room setup though! For dessert, Clay ordered chocolate ice cream and I order peanut butter pie. The desserts were not too tasty and we wouldn't get them again. Clay had to get a take away box for half his slab of ribs! I think things might have gone better for us at Mary Mac's except that they seat you with a menu and an order form, pencils on the table. We didn't see a waitperson until she arrived to pick up our forms. So, you can't really ask questions to find out more about the menu or what you are ordering! Also, we had already caused enough trouble and delay when I refused the first table we were shown. Mary Mac's occupies what was originally at least 3 store front buildings along Ponce De Leon Avenue. Where the floors meet now in open space is not even. That table sat atop one of those joins and it was tilted at least 10-15 degrees off level. There was no way I could sit there without triggering vertigo and hurling, so I asked to be seated at a level table. Evidently those tables are in lesser supply and greater demand. Anyway, by the time all that had happened, we just filled out the forms by guessing about the answers to our questions and lived with the results. I got back to the car just as the meter was expiring. Clay arrived shortly after it expired and someone was waiting for me to pull out. Busy place!

Traffic was much lighter on the way back to the Hilton Garden Inn. That is until we reached the parking garage! For $18 per night, HGI offers self-parkers covered parking and the ability to come and go at will using your key card. But, not tonight. We drove all the way up to the 12th floor and uncovered parking before we found any vacant spots and we were clearly up there with the evening's celebrants as evidenced by the vomit against the driver's side the next morning! Another mark against HGI and downtown Atlanta in general is that when I was planning, I could not find any kind of general calendar of events. So, we could try to not be in the middle of something big. We learned on our walk through Olympic Park earlier in the day that the Atlanta Marathon was occurring on Sunday. Even as we transited the parking garage and hotel lobby the night before, we could find nothing about the timing or road closures.

Well, we watched the remainder of a Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan cop movie on HBO and I stayed up and laughed my way through Pee Wee. It was bittersweet. The NY audience was awesome in their participation and reactions. The show was very nearly a verbatim remake of Pee Wee's original HBO live show. They had to change some of the characters though as for example Phil Hartmann is dead and they did not reprise his character. And there was some updating, for example, the Playhouse being wired for Internet. I enjoyed it very much though. We slept better tonight, though the A/C was still overly noisy and the sheets kept popping off the top corners of the bed.

I'll end here and finish off the Atlanta trip with a new final entry.

Photos

Atlanta, the beginning

Bob Evans - my mush, Clay's Sr. breakfast and a side of sausage

When we originally planned this trip, we did not know that Clay would be in India for the previous week and a half! (See the link to the right for Clay's solo trips.) So, we had originally planned to head out after he got off work. Since he was so jetlagged already, and with a cold/cough, that he took off Friday and we left early. That meant Bob Evans breakfast! That's right our first stop was at the 15/501 exit in Durham.

We had a couple of more stops for gas and the restroom. But, we were heading for the Georgia welcome center on I-85 to get a new map. This was a really worthwhile stop. We each got a complimentary pack of Georgia peanuts, which made a timely snack since we were skipping lunch. Also, we picked up an Atlanta Street Map & Visitor's Guide and it had coupons on it! So, we saved $3 each off the price of our admission at Zoo Atlanta.

I-85 GA Visitor's Center

Hilton Garden Inn Room 1213

We arrived at our hotel, the Downtown Atlanta Hilton Garden Inn after checkin time, so after a bit of a wait for the line to clear, we were in our room 1213 and unpacked. ($157 per night/1 King bed city view/nonrefundable rate + $43 or so in taxes + $18 per night self-parking) The main goal of our trip was to go to the GA Aquarium and those were the only tickets we had purchased online in advance. (Adult general admission $24.95pp + $3.99 tax + $2.50 processing fee) (Side Note here: both the Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola had self-service kiosks for purchasing tickets onsite!)

GA Aquarium opened in 2005. I don't know whether this hotel was here before that or built after, but it was aquarium, under-the-sea themed. Nice or creepy, you decide. I say, keep away from the water!

Hilton Garden Inn Room 1213

View from #1213 - GA Aquarium & World of Coca-Cola

Another view from #1213 - Centennial Olympic Park

A few words here about Downtown Atlanta's Hilton Garden Inn. I chose it based on location, pricing and availability. It was a good enough choice without benefit of hindsight. The Holiday Inn a bit further away might have been a better choice. HGI was clean and a great location, just across the street from the aquarium and World of Coca-Cola. Downsides were the alarmingly loud AC unit under the window, the lack of soundproofing at the door (though we heard nothing from our side or upper or lower neighbors!). We were in the next to the last room on our section of hall, so by all rights there should not have been much traffic by our door. I don't know what to say, other than they skimped here on soundproofing, it sounded like people were just inside the room stomping, hollering, screaming, etc. Not good. We liked the minifridge, as oppossed to minibar which is just a hassle! There was a coffee maker, ice bucket and even a microwave. Wireless Internet worked well and was complimentary in the room, as well as a couple of public stations on the 1st floor. The HGI had a display at the checkin desk about their comfortable, adjustable beds. That seemed promising! Not. Our bed was broken, permanently set on firm. It was supposedly serviced on Saturday, my dial was fixed but the bed was still very firm even when I changed it to the softest possible setting. Even worse, though was that apparently because of the bulge of the controls at the side of the head of the bed, the fitted sheets did not fit and during the night they would pop off and you would be left on bare mattress. In this case, the mattress top was sheepskin, so weird and gross! Between the noise, the bed among other things, we did not get much rest. The real downside was that our room was not cleaned/made up during our day out on Saturday. We came back hot and sweaty and Clay really wanted a nap, but our room had not been serviced. That was a bit of unpleasantness that we had to handle and within 45 minutes it was resolved and Clay was napping, but really not what we expected. I will only say that I have probably not stayed in a Hilton since a 3-night stay at Chicago's Palmer House in the 1980's when our room did not get made up once! To the best of my recollection, Hilton is the only hotel chain where I have ever experienced this housekeeping dereliction. I guess given the amount of choice in hotels it will be another 20 years before I give another Hilton a shot.


Um.... Bob?

 We freshened up and unpacked and Clay decided since he could see the World of Coca-Cola that we should go there this afternoon. We set out. Now, notwithstanding my previous post about the highlight of the trip happening in the World of Coca-Cola with the polar bear photo interaction, I was a little disappointed and not all that happy with the experience overall. It was very crowded and extremely noisy! You are herded through in huge groups. After a brief wait in a lobby area, you are herded into a display of historical artifacts, but you are packed in there and can't wander and look at any of it. A woman with a microphone blares over the roar of the crowd describing what is on display, until the film in the auditorium lets out its previous group and we move in. It is a rather disgusting cartoon imagining of life in a Coke machine. If I thought it was anything like that, I would never buy another Coke from a vending machine again! Eeuuw! By the way, the big kissy lips dog above is one of the characters from the film. It was not that long, I am going to guess between 6 and 10 minutes. But, it was mandatory when it would have been better to be optional!

Clay in World of Coca-Cola

Bob & Debbie in World of Coca-Cola

They released us from the bottom of the theater (we entered from the top) and into a big open space where the polar bear makes an appearance at quarter past the hour. We got out there too late and the line was roped off. We had to come back and get in line for the next quarter hour. Our hostess had earlier announced that we were one of the last groups of the day. They closed at 6:30pm and last admission was 5pm. We arrived about 4:30pm and we checked out of the store at the exit at 6:27pm. Admission was $16pp. There is a working production line, but we got there after they had ended production for the day. We did get to see the last capped bottles still moving, but everything before capping was already shut down. That was disappointing. There were a couple of more theaters, both optional. One had Coca-Cola products commercials from around the world airing continuously. One was scheduled showings of an imagined flavor/essence of Coke laboratory in a 4-D theater. Clay said it was very rough. I sat in one of the 8 non-moving seats in the back and got only the water sprays and wind puffs and watched the heads in front bumping around. The other big attraction was the tasting room with over 60 different Coca-Cola products from around the world. This might have been cool if we hadn't done it at no extra charge in Epcot at WDW in Orlando in the last couple of years. In Epcot, it is in an enclosed and air conditioned room to take a break for some refreshing beverages and get out of the FL sunshine. Here it was a loud, hot, sticky-floored room right before you pick up your cool souvenir short Coke in a bottle and exit through the store.

Souvenir bottles traveling overhead in the tasting room

Pick up souvenir bottle of Coke & exit through store

Clay got a retro-styled T-shirt that lists the 63 tasting flavors with their countries of origin on the back. It was cool and it cost $18.95+tax. I bought the photo of the polar bear chomping Bob show in the previous post and it was $21.59. (Oh, BTW during the polar bear photo op, there is a professional photographer there taking photos, but there is another guy there that will take a photo with your camera if you give it to him. So, the photos on the previous post are the After one we purchased and I scanned in here and the Before one that was taken with our camera!)  I also got a red Coca-Cola apron for $19+tax.

We exited and walked back up to our room. We put our little Cokes in our fridge, dropped off our sack, picked up a map and headed out to eat.

Dinner at The Varsity

Clay has had a hankering... been on a quest for... a good chili dog. Go figure. It has been harder to satisfy this yen than you might imagine and we have eaten a lot of chili dogs in the last quarter. So, tonight we are off with the top down on the SLK to The Varsity, the world's largest drive-in, serving chili dogs since 1928. They sell their chili in a can. Clay got one and a t-shirt (mainly so I could justify the shipping charges!) for Valentine's Day. That weekend he had 3 different cans of chili open and in a blind taste test, we both picked The Varsity as the best. So, you know that we are eating our first meal here if not multiple meals here.

I should mention that we had glorious weather on this trip. It was hot, but not humid, with rarely a cloud in the sky. I would say 60s at night and 80s during the day with lots of sunshine. It turned cooler and overcast on Sunday, but still very pleasant weather.

The Varsity - Drive-In!

Back to The Varsity. It was very easy to get to from the HGI downtown and we were there in about 10 to 15 minutes. Traffic was crazy! So, it turns out that on arrival in addition to being a drive-in, there is also inside seating. We wound up parked in the area of drive-in only/cash only dining and since it was so nice out, we decided to stay put and we paid cash and ate in the car. It was fun. They brought us each paper hats to go with! What did we have? I had a chili dog with fries. (Bad, bad fries! Blech!) I also had a chocolate shake. Clay had a chili dog and a grilled pimento cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake. (Clay did not like the pimento cheese sandwich or the fries. He wished he had just ordered 2 chili dogs.) Oh, and the onions. I think their deal is that they serve Vidalia onions. I ordered my dog without and Clay ordered his with. They brought about a cup of diced onions wrapped in a couple sheets of wax paper! Clay couldn't possibly eat them all. I don't know what that was about, if they always serve onions that way or if it was because they weren't sure whose dog got onions and whose didn't. But, anyway they came on the side, a lot of them! I don't have our receipt, but if you're interested in prices, you can check the website's menu from the above links.

There was an amazing, enormous full moon out that night. Unfortunately, none of Clay's night photos turned out very all, all pretty blurry, so I will spare you night time photos. We went to bed pretty early. Clay was exhausted from his jetlag and cold/cough and from his exertions today. I was exhausted from the drive and the overheated, crowded World of Coca-Cola. So, we headed to bed pretty early. I read for awhile and then tried to sleep. Between getting up in the middle of the night to try to get the fitted sheet back on the bed and my gas, I only slept about 3 hours. Clay was out of it except for remaking the bed around 3:30am. What gas you say? It was like something out of science fiction... I was farting like respiration, about 1 fart per every 6 breaths all night long! It should not have been a physical possiblity for any human to have that much gas inside them. Clay asked at the 3:30am bed remaking and I couldn't explain it. I still can't explain it. But, we did decide that Clay's chili dog quest notwithstanding and the excellent chili dogs, I was not eating at The Varsity again this trip!

Well, tomorrow morning we have tickets for 9am at the Georgia Aquarium. So, I will break here and start a new entry for Saturday.

Fun in Atlanta or Little Bob's Big Adventure

Before - me holding down the bear's paw

We're back from our weekend in Atlanta. I'll just go straight to the best moment of the weekend in photos before going along with all the details. Bob got chomped by a 7-foot tall polar bear! Don't worry, he didn't really get hurt. That bear was hilarious. I still can't quite figure out how the head worked. I think it must have been some kind of remote control puppetry. But, in any event, it was completely adorable and charming. He sniffed and laughed and tasted things, he cried and pouted and smiled. He was the very best thing in the World of Coca-Cola!



After - Bob being chomped in the polar bear's mouth! Look at that bear squint his eyes!