Atlanta Trip Report (Two Months Late)

Well, it's been about two months now since fu-min came for a visit and we visited some places in the Atlanta area. Kind of a late update, but better late than never, right?

Big sign or little woman?

We went through the CNN studio tour. It was pretty interesting and you get to see some artifacts like a road sign brought back from Iraq that has so many bulletholes in it that it looks like swiss cheese.

The Coca-Cola Insignia in Japanese

We also went to the "World of Coca-Cola" which is basically a museum of all things Coca-Cola. They have old bottles, old ads, etc. They even have a room setup as an old-fashioned soda shop with a soda jerk who gives a presentation on how fountain sodas used to be made. They also have free samples of U.S. beverages and international beverages made by Coca-Cola. The bottom two on my list: Bitter Something-or-other (don't remember the exact name) from Italy and Ginger Beer from South Africa. What makes these two so horrible? In both cases the name is very representative of the taste.

Landsh... er, Whaleshark

With the Georgia Aquarium having been completed last November, no trip to Atlanta is complete without a visit to the world's largest aquarium. The ocean display is great (part of which you see above). They have two whalesharks, a tunnel you walk through which goes under the tank, and the largest viewing window in North America (the picture above). If you'd like to go to the aquarium, my advice would be to go on a weekday and go first thing in the morning; the place gets packed!

Reach out and touch... a starfish

Tybee Lighthouse

We paid a visit to Tybee Lighthouse which is on Tybee Island (near Savannah). We climbed all the way to the top, but didn't have the nerve to walk around the external walkway at the top.

Fort Pulaski: The first fort to get the crap blown out of it by rifled cannon

We also visited Fort Pulaski which is about halfway between Savannah and Tybee Island. Fort Pulaski was built due to a lesson learned during the War of 1812: American waterways could be better protected. The fort's design and construction was the first assignment for a Westpoint graduate who is now better known as a Hemi Orange 1969 Dodge Charger with a Confederate flag painted on the roof (Robert E. Lee). After the fort was built several years passed, the fort wasn't kept up as well as it could have been, and it was starting to look like Georgia would join the Confederacy in war against the North. Southern soldiers captured the fort from a handful of Union soldiers without needing to fire a single bullet. The Confederates dug in and brought the fort back up to the kind of condition it should have been in. When Union guns started showing up across the river, the officers in command of Fort Pulaski weren't worried. General Lee himself had told them that the Union cannon wouldn't be able to do any significant damage from that distance. I mean, who wouldn't have believed him? He built the place! Well, little did General Lee know that the Union had developed a new weapon and the power of the rifled cannon was about to be unleashed for the first time in battle. The Union guns knocked down a large part of the fort's outer wall (you can see the area that had to be repaired--the bricks are a brighter orange and there are no pock marks from shells) and the Confederates surrendered the fort (surprisingly, there were very few casulties). To this day you can still see some of the shells lodged in the damaged outer wall. This place is a pretty neat little piece of history.

The first victim of rifled cannon -- forts would never be built the same again