USA Holiday 3, September 30 (Home Of The Braves)

Went through Piedmont Park in the morning. It's in the northern suburbs of Atlanta which seems to be a lot cleaner and nicer than the areas around downtown.

Lake Clara Meer.

Piedmont Park.

Stopped in at the CNN Center for lunch which was packed with people on their way to the Georgia Dome, where I was headed too. Given the undefeated Atlanta Falcons (3-0) were playing a poor Carolina Panthers (1-2) team it was a remarkably good and high scoring game. The lead jumped back and forth a number of times, before the home team Falcons won with a field goal with only 5 seconds remaining.

Outside the dome, before I walked around the whole stadium to find my gate.

Before the game.

Indoor fireworks are never a bad idea.

Rushing down field on the game winning drive.

Falcons win.

USA Holiday 3, September 29 (Let's Rock)

Started off the first day in Atlanta by jumping on a train and a bus to travel 25km *out* of the city. The destination was Stone Mountain Park, except the buses don't go all the way to the park, and the directions I could find online were not too specific. Never fear though, because the LED panels inside the bus had two of the following three pieces of information:

1. The current date
2. The current time
3. The upcoming stop

That's right! Why bother with important information like where you are headed, when you can tell people what day it is.

As we reached some ominous looking old style town I asked the driver where to go for Stone Mountain Park and luckily it was just in time to get off, and he even gave directions. There weren't any signs for the park after getting off, so as I was walking I still wasn't totally sure I was going the right way, but soon enough the park turned up.

At Stone Mountain Park there is a mountain, and it is made of stone. It was quite a hot day and a pretty steep elevation, so it was hard work getting all the way to the top. From the top you could see the downtown Atlanta skyline in the distance, and also another skyline not far away which may have been North Atlanta or something. It was a little bit foggy or polluted, so it was a little hard to make out the details.

A mountain with a hand rail.

Still not at the top.

Try to find Atlanta.

There was also a chili cook-off festival around the other side of the mountain, but I wasn't too desperate to go to that. There is some confederate carving in the side of the mountain somewhere, like a poor man's Mount Rushmore, but I couldn't tell if it would be publicly accessible with the festival in progress.

Headed back to Atlanta and stopped off for some lunch at a place called Grindhouse Killer Burgers (?) which I guess was alright, then across town to the Coca Cola Bottling Plant, or more accurately known as the World Of Coca Cola. The tour, cinema and some of the historical artifacts were passable, but the highlight was the samples room. They have a whole bunch of drink stations were you can help yourself to free samples of different drinks made by the Coca Cola company from each region: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. The success of the drinks varied, some were great and others not so much, but by far the worst one was "Beverly" from Italy. Do not ever try it.

Georgia Aquarium across from Coca Cola.

If you pass the big Coke bottle, you've gone too far.

The 3:00-3:15 Coke session.

The last time a vending machine sold Tab.

These are other drinks.

The only machine I could get a good photo of.

The other highlight for me was seeing some kid getting told off for skipping all of these sample machines, things you may never see again, and instead using the regular machines at the back of the room: ones that just had Coke, Coke Zero, Cherry Coke etc. Their parents were not at all pleased. I saw several other people using those machines too, which I did not understand.

Back into downtown through Centennial Olympic Park - it is a park with some connection to the 1996 Olympics, but there was not a lot there besides a statue with the olympic rings. After visiting Atlanta, I'm not exactly sure how they won the olympics, maybe having a big airport helped.

Olympic Park.

Before heading off to the baseball there was enough time to go to Atlanta Underground. It sounds interesting but is just a small underground shopping mall, no bigger than what you get at Melbourne Central for example. It was not very exciting. Jumped on the free shuttle bus to get to Turner Field for the Atlanta Braves vs. New York Mets game. This was the third last home game for Chipper Jones (20 years, 1 league MVP) so the crowd would stand and cheer every time he came up to bat, only he didn't manage a hit for the game from four opportunities. The game was not bad, considering I was still kind of tired from travel, and the Braves won 2-0.

Chipper.

On the 15 minute shuttle bus back to downtown I had this guy sitting right behind me who sounded like he had contracted one of every known virus imaginable. A non-stop combination of coughing, sneezing and sniffing. I had a hat over my face for the whole trip and tried to breathe in as little as possible, somehow I managed to avoid catching anything.