Though it was a bit out of our way, Justin and I decided to come back through Atlanta and stay for a couple days. It worked out especially well, as my sister Maria was able to come up from her home about an hour south and spend the day with us exploring and being tourists.
Look! There's a fish in the window!
We walked from our hotel over to the Georgia Aquarium, only about 5 blocks. We were able to slowly wander through the exhibits, worked at steering clear of the herds of 5 year olds, reaching into tide pools to touch sharks, rays, and sea urchins, watched an extraordinarily awkward dolphin show (less singing, more dolphins please!), and in general enjoy exploring this aquarium.
What a funny perspective! Justin is in the lookout dome, though it looks like he is in a tank with the fish looking at him!
It was rather funny to be behind this group of little kids as the moving sidewalk went through the Whale Shark's tank. All the pointing fingers, gasps of awe, and little shouts of "look at that!". It is a pretty impressive portion of the aquarium.
There is a special frog exhibit going on right now, and it actually was one of my favorite parts! Though this particular frog twitched funny and Maria might have almost tipped over!
After the Aquarium, we walked around and through Centennial Olympic Park and stopped at a little hamburger stand, Googie Burger, for lunch.
Buddy, enjoying the freedom not being a plant offers.
We really weren’t expecting too much, but these burgers and fries were a hit! Buddy, recently emerged from his brown shell as a real pig, enjoyed Googie Burger as well!
CNN Headquarters
From the park we walked over the CNN Headquarters and purchased tickets for the studio tour. It was pretty interesting to listen to the director produce the live shows, watch some of the live feeds, and see the news room floors. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many monitors in one place in my life!
Interior of CNN. The Studio tours starts by riding up the escalator to the 8th floor, inside the globe.
This escalator was Justin's dream come true. Maria's, not so much.
CNN's newsroom. Where all the news from around the country and world gets filtered down to what actually makes it on the air.
As close to Anderson Cooper as we could get... in the gift shop.
In all, we had a fun day taking in some of the Atlanta sites and visiting with Maria. We’re glad we took the extra time for this stop!
