Day 14 – The real taste of Georgia – Atlanta Downtown
Travel Experience | Ricky | March 22, 2010 at 12:05 amAll excited for today’s fun-filled day, I got up a little early to have a peaceful cup of hot ginger tea. The day was pretty much well as yesterday’s sunnier day. We all 4 of us got ready to drive a half an hour drive to downtown to visit the tourists destinations here. Here in Atlanta, they have CNN headquarters, the largest Aquarium across United States and a tour down of Coca-cola museum. Other than this places, there are other places as well, which are not much visited by the tourists here but if given the option you would surely love to explore the first three places stated and then the later ones. The Atlanta downtown was quite an experience, because they do have lots of traffic during peak hours, even the afternoons you had find traffic on roads.
The downtown Atlanta is a financial center for bigger companies and organizations like Suntrust banks, Ernst and Young and many more. The huge glass buildings really make it a beautiful skyline during the evening time. All the three places where we were supposed to visit were at close proximity from each other, they are all located close to 5 minutes of distance from each other. The huge CNN building was well structured and looked really interesting from outside. As soon as we entered the building I could see the huge gangway and at one corner there was a queue for collecting our visitor tickets. After nearly standing for 25 minutes, we finally got to get inside after having a strict security gates. Becky was our tour guide and she instructed us on each and every cabin and processes of CNN reporting. Getting inside, there was a huge escalator that was 190 feet long around 8 stories. It was nicely structured without any support. Before the CNN office came into being in the year 1980, the place was an amusement park and these escalators was a part of the amusement park.
We could actually see the work cabin and actual places from where they broadcast the news. It was truly an experience, I can now wonder how it takes too much of efforts to bring all the material and showcase it in front of your audience. A truly magnificent news channel reporting processes. The tour took us around 55 minutes but taught us the real way in which broadcasting was done. After getting down, walking for nearly 8 minutes we reached the famous “Georgia Aquarium”, it is one of the biggest and have several shows to look for. This is especially interesting for those who love to know about sea world. There were different tickets to select from, those were premium tickets, day pass, show tickets, annual membership plans that people could select from matching their budgets.
There was a huge hall in a circle and there were dome like structures, which were given different names like Cold Water Quest, Ocean Voyager, Georgia Explorer, River Scout, 4D Theater, Tropical Diver. There were other tours like behind 
the scenes tours and audio tour which cost just $1. The Aquarium had eating facilities like café Aquaria and other fun places like gift shops, Oceans ballroom, Audio tours and much more. The Aquarium is one of the biggest and has more than eight million gallons of fresh marine water and aquatic life found in any aquarium. Each and every corner of the aquarium is filled with excitement and much fun, as you can see different species of fishes, some of them, which were told to be extinct. Wow, it was a wonderful experience to see different colored fishes in the glass dome above you.
The area COLD WATER QUEST was filled with fish and marine mammals from south Australia to south Africa. There were Australian weedy sea dragons and also Japanese spider crabs. Each window we went to, we could see a description board and in some places the open area let us even touch the fishes with two fingers. It was seriously a mind-boggling experience. The GEORGIA PACIFIC PENGUIN PLUNGE was the place where we could see penguins in their natural habitat with snow in their enclosures. I could see them swimming, playing diving and flopping around the place. The Deepo’s 3D 
show was simply one of the best experiences I had in the aquarium, we wore 3D glass and went inside a small theater. The story was about Deepo – a fish and one of his friend, they talked at length about the sea world and illustrated it how humans are making difficult for fishes to thrive by putting dangerous objects like cans, plastic, etc in the sea. Each of the sea’s actions, made us feel that we are seriously getting on inside the sea as water showers were made on us. The movie lasted for about half an hour and later we headed for Planet Shark Experience.
The Planet Shark area was close knit and as we saw inside, there were different specimens of shark, about their history, how they started changing in their shapes, some examples of sharp attacks on humans and many such things related to shark. As we moved further, I could see the real swim suites of the men who wore them while shark attacked them and also the inventions of shark attack proof swim wear which had bubbles with some chemicals, which could refrain sharks from coming to you again. It took us almost one hour to study their history and the bigger question that stroke everyone was whether “Shark – A Predator or a Prey”. In the history of human life, there were several attacks which humans did on sharks for their own selfish pleasure like preparing chips from their fins, using for medicinal purposes, using their skin for artificial materials, teeth powder for some laboratories, etc. The shark attacks are really dangerous; they showed us videos of shark attacks on humans and many such examples. The fact is that humans’ kills approximately 3 to 4 sharks each year while in contrast humans kill 70 million sharks each year. Coming out of the shark’s dome I was really surprised how powerful the nature is and their natural habitat animals. They can do each and everything as we humans do to protect them.
Well, getting out of the aquarium we headed straight for Lenox Square to have some good meal for the day. It was a fun evening again as it was a Saturday and people were in great mood to party around!
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Georgia is really fun to visit. It has got everything for everyone. I specially like aquarium.
Atlanta has the highest population in Georgia. It is also one of the busiest place in US.
Yeah, Atlanta has the largest indoor Aquarium in the world. It is really huge and there are many marine species. Some fo them I’ve never seen in my life.
Coca Cola museum was fun to visit. You get to taste all the stuffs made by Coca Cola and also you come to know the history.
Atlanta is also very fond of sports. It has a team in almost all field of US sports. Basketball, Baseball, etc.
I just love aquarium in Atlanta. Its the best I’ve ever seen
My eyes remained popped up after seeing some of the beautiful species and also enjoying the 3D movie 
Atlanta, New York, Las Vegas, LA, all these places are for partying!! you can have some of the most amazing and wildest nights of your life.