Georgia on my Mind

Early start again today. Stopped for gas at a roadside Florida Orange Center and got some fresh orange slices. When in Florida... The vegetation changes quite drastically from Orlando area palm trees, to dense forests of northern Florida to low tropical forests and open fields in Georgia. It's still very hot in Georgia (around 90 F today) which apparently is cooler than it was in Canada today, but the humidity here is still a major factor.

A few hours and several pit stops later, we were in Atlanta. Seven lanes on each side of the highway in. I thought Atlanta was only a couple million people, but looks like as much as 7 in the metro area, thus the crazy amounts of traffic. Our GPS took us through some unsavory neighbourhoods, which our hotel ended up being just on the edge of. Checked in and asked if it's safe to walk around to the stadium and museums. "Yeah, only thing is that it might rain on ya" was the response of the lady at the front desk. So we hoofed it over to the World of Coca-Cola museum a couple miles from the hotel. Quite a large building and right next to the Georgia Aquarium, which apparently is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. Odd place for that. We got tickets and went through the metal detectors into the lobby of the Coke museum. The fellow in front of us hand to check his pocket knife at the door...('muricah!). We were shuffled into a secondary lobby where we got some history on the brand and a bunch of heritage pieces displayed in this room. Then we entered the next room which was a theatre to watch an animated movie showing the new advertising characters for Coke. After this we were free to wander the exhibits.

We checked out a couple of museum type rooms of nostalgia Coke machines/signs, etc. first. Cruised through there quite quickly. The line to look at the Coke vault "containing the secret formula" was too long, as was the one to get a photo with the animatronic polar bear, so we went upstairs to the taste testing room. Here we each got a cup and got to sample 8 Coke products from each of the following regions: Africa, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Europe. Some very interesting ones in there, some great, and some awful. Notably a couple from Britain were terrible. So with our teeth sufficiently rotted, we went to the 4D theatre for a little movie about the joys of Coke. It was 3D plus moving seats, plus wind and water, and even  a bit that jabbed you in the back (which seemed unnecessary but was part of the 4th dimension evidently). That seemed like enough marketing for the day, so we exited through the gift shop, which meant needing to load up on merchandise first. Coolest gift shop with the best product selection I have ever seen. Got a pretty good pile of things and then caught a cab back to the hotel.

Changed (heat and humidity = sticky clothes), had a couple beers and cabbed to Turner Field and watched the Atlanta Braves absolutely crush the Miami Marlins. Just need some apple pie to go with the baseball game and Budweiser beer and that's about as American as it gets. Caught a cab outside the stadium and asked for a recommendation of a cool bar to check out. Cabbie had zero suggestions. So we went back to the hotel and planned our route for tomorrow then retired for the night. Tomorrow sees us travelling through Alabama up to Nashville, where we plan on spending the 4th of July.