Atlanta, Georgia

Last weekend Lisa and I drove to Atlanta, Georgia. My grandma, grandpa, aunt, and uncle flew there from Salt Lake for business so we took the opportunity to see some family. Normally Atlanta is in the 50's for their temperature in January. This time was a little lower as we were in the 20's. The cold weather limited our desire to walk around and explore the city.

We did make a few stops and The World of Coca-Cola museum was one of them. Most of the museum focused on the marketing history of Coke. We also saw how Coke is bottled today. And we met the Coke polar bear. We enjoyed the taste center where you could try different Coke products from around the world. I liked the drinks from South America. They were very fruity and sweet. The drinks from Europe were horrible, especially one call Beverly from Italy. Lisa liked the North American drinks.

We stayed out by the airport and took the public transportation train, MARTA, to downtown. At the downtown stop you have to go up a huge escalator to get out. While there we spent some time at a gift show expo. My family attends this expo each year to buy the items they sell in their store, Randee and Company. I had always heard them describe it but never understood the magnitude of this expo. The showroom is in 3 buildings and uses up probably 25 floors all together. It was fun to see.

Grandma Norma and Grandpa Dick snuck away from the expo one day to go to the Georgia Aquarium with us. The Georgia Aquarium is the largest in the world and has some huge exhibits. We were able to see 4 Whale Sharks which are the largest fish in the world. Each one in the aquarium were over 20 feet long!

The rest of the exhibits were fun too. The penguins liked Grandma and even danced for her. We went to a special shark exhibit that was meant to give you a better understanding of sharks so you would appreciate them more and fear them less. The exhibit made some good points and was meeting its goals until the end when they showed pictures of shark attack wounds, newspaper headlines about shark attacks, and objects such as surf boards that have been chewed on by sharks. It was cool to see all that stuff but seemed to go against the spirit of the exhibit.

It was fun to see everyone. We knew that not seeing family as often as we did was one of the sacrifices we would be making by leaving Utah so it was nice that family came so close to us. If you look real close at the picture, you can see Grandpa in the back. Don't ask why he thought he would be seen standing in the back of everyone.

Lisa and I plan to go back to Atlanta but not until summer, or at least spring. I'm sure the Cubs will stop by some time to beat up on the Braves!