All's Peachy in Atlanta City

Peachy Atlanta. Home of Coca Cola and CNN and gosh darn wasn’t it hot! We left Kristin and Vanja in Washington and flew to Atlanta for 3 days because... well... we had 3 days free and couldn’t think of anywhere else to go to, to be honest!! Shortly after we got there, we realised that Atlantans were obsessed with Peaches. There are 58 streets in Atlanta with the word ‘Peach’ in it’s name. Our little hostel was a quaint, 3 storey wooden house – with no elevator and we were on the 3^rd floor. Hmmm – see picture of our bags to understand our horror. The owners were just ‘peachy’ and so friendly with their southern charm and we settled in quickly with the 10 other Aussies staying there! No matter where you go in the world, if you stay at a hostel you are sure to hear the nasal accent of the Aussie and maybe even one or two ‘iccilint iccints’ of the Kiwis. We did meet some lovely people there over the next few days – and some strange ones too but it wouldn’t be hostel living if there weren’t a couple of those around right? Those who have backpacked before are nodding their heads knowingly....

Our first day we were all set and raring to go. Heading off on foot into town, sweat pouring off us like a good Cairns summer day, we traversed the streets, studied our map and finally when we got into town, we realised it was Sunday and EVERYTHING was closed. No wonder the streets were so quiet! Sitting in the main park we pulled out all our tourist brochures, hunted for opening times and days and found something open!!! The Jim Hensen’s Puppetry Museum. It doesn’t get any better than Fraggles, Sesame Street and The Labyrinth on a hot Sunday afternoon. Did I mention that we even saw Kermit the Frog? He wasn’t doing autographs that day though. The whole museum was pretty cool actually – and airconditioned so we were happy. The next 2 days saw us catching up with my friend from school Adele Pike and her lovely family for a good ol’ home cooked lasagne and Dora the Explorer videos. It was so nice to spend time with Adele, Joe, Aspen and little Maxi for the evening in a family environment.

Adele, Maxi, Aspen and Joe (our photographer) share their lovely home with us

We headed into town the following day to go and see the ‘Home of Coca Cola’. Some people may not realise that Coke was created and first sold in Atlanta by John Pemberton (yes I was listening!) and since, then the phenomenon that is Coke, has been recorded in history at this type of museum to Coca Cola. It is really well done and such a cool experience. You even get to taste several of the 430 Coca Cola products now made throughout the world in the ‘Tasting Room’ and we even got a free bottle of Coke at the end!

Bottles themed from around the world...

New Zealand

Argentina with China in the background

Enter into the World that is Coke...

Old school Coke delivery truck

Heidi's version of the Coca Cola logo - not bad we thought!

Old vending Coke machines

The newest labelled Coke bottles - very patriotic

Next on our tourist trail was CNN. Wow, there was more security here than at JFK airport! Heaven forbid someone should want to blow up the Sports Reporter! It was an amazing building though and so interesting to see how the whole process of making, reporting and delivering the news takes place.

The CNN building in Atlanta

And our time in Atlanta had very quickly come to an end because it was onto bigger and better places......

H and S