I hinted here about a fun weekend trip to Hotlanta and I guess since it’s the weekend after it’s about time I recapped it! I was SO EXCITED about the CNN studio tour and I convinced my friends that we needed to stay at the Omni which is ever so conveniently located in the same building as the CNN Center. Splitting it between the three of us, it wasn’t expensive at all for such a nice hotel. I definitely recommend the Omni for any future Atlanta trips, whether you need to stay downtown or not. It faced the Centennial Park, the George Aquarium, and the World of Coke. We had a fantastic view of all of this.
(Note: some of these photos are ganked from my friend K’s Facebook, but she isn’t planning to make a coffee table book out of these, so she won’t mind.)
And this is the view from the inside of the hotel, looking towards the CNN Center. EXCITED!
We got to Atlanta late Saturday afternoon so the most important thing to do there was to EAT. I found a gastropub called Max Lager’s that was .7 miles from the Omni, according to Google maps. Max Lager’s was an excellent little place to grab an Atlanta brewed beer (it reminded me of Hunter-Gatherer here in town) and some nicer bar fare. I somehow managed to delete the photos we took from there off of the obviously-too-fancy-for-me Canon, but Max Lager’s was worth going to. Service was fantastic, the beer was worth drinking, and the food was filling. Try the Max Gold beer if you go.
Sunday was Tour Day!
The tour cost $15 and it ended up being about $15 worth of information. I thought we might get to see some real sets, but it was just fake sets mostly. They were cool though. And since we toured on September 11th, most of the anchors were out on assignment in NYC or Pennsylvania, but we did get to see Natasha Curry live doing a segment. And we got to see a few of the newsrooms, which weren’t as full since it was a Sunday. I can’t imagine working in such tight quarters like this, but I presume these dutiful workers Love. Their Jobs. Otherwise, why would they be doing it?
Then it was aquarium time! I learned that the Georgia Aquarium is the largest in the world, which means that if you see this one, you’ll never have to go to another one again! It blows my mind that there was enough room in downtown Atlanta to fit this monstrous building. It is huge in there.
Click for larger versions of the fish pictures below.
We kept seeing these dolphin statues all over town and they finally made sense once we got to the aquarium. A series of them were done to represent places/people/ideas all over town, but this one was the funniest by far:
It’s a Conan O’Brien dolphin!! I love the hair.
Then we got back in the car and came back home. It was about a 24 hour time frame spent in the ATL, and was enough downtown for me. I am thinking next time a trip to Little Five Points is in order though. Then maybe Midtown… we’ll do it one area at a time!
