Georgia Aquarium
By far the coolest reason for stopping here, in two words: whale sharks!!!
Little did I realize that the aquarium actually has four of these monstrosities, and in fact the only ones in captivity in the western hemisphere. Even more amusing was the tidbit that the sharks were actually UPS’ed over from Taiwan to Atlanta – they had a short video which described the whole transport process and showed the containers, which I found really interesting. Overall, they were just really amazing creatures to watch peacefully swimming around – I could’ve sat there all day, which reminded me of the fascination that my cousin and I shared for watching sharks at SeaWorld when we were growing up. The rest of the aquarium had its moments, although it could definitely learn a thing or two about managing crowds.
It’s a comparison that we find ourselves making a lot – you don’t truly appreciate how well Disney actually manages its crowds and attraction queues until you’ve been pretty much anyplace else that doesn’t!
World of Coca-Cola
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but it was right across the park from the aquarium and since Coke is clearly a big name in Atlanta, we kind of felt obligated to check it out! It ended up being a lot of fun, though – we got to see a walkthrough of how Coke is bottled, taste-tested some of their other brands from around the world, and of course, the highlight of the visit was getting our photo with this extraordinarily charismatic, little fellow…
Seriously, one of the most animated characters I’ve ever seen, and that’s comparing him to Disney’s entire arsenal, which is pretty impressive in my books!
Driving in Atlanta
Surprisingly not as bad as I was expecting, albeit we ended up leaving super late and didn’t get to our hotel until about 2am! I’m still sure it would’ve been a bear at any other time because the hotel that we stayed at was right downtown, but fortunately it was right across the street from the aquarium, so the only real driving we had was in at night and then back out late Saturday afternoon.
Next Up: driving up to Northern Michigan!