Hotlanta

So, yeah, there's an awesome story behind this one.  

So Travis was surfing around Ebay awhile back, and he happened upon an auction for a hotel voucher.  It was for the Hilton Downtown Atlanta, and was being offered by Hilton themselves.  The voucher was for two nights at the hotel, two mornings' worth of breakfast for two, and executive lounge access.  The bidding was around $20.  Travis was like, well we fly to places for less reason than that!  A weekend in a nice hotel sounds pretty relaxing.  So he threw up a bid... and won it for all of $27.01 + $5 shipping.

Upon paying for the item, however, Hilton refunded the purchase price!  They replied saying that the auction was actually for a different hotel in the region -- not the one listed -- and that they would be refunding the purchase price.  Uh, whatever.  Given that these stay packages have a declared value of $500+, these seemed like an attempt to weasel out of the transaction.  Travis responded to them saying that he was excited to stay at this property, and that he would contact Ebay if necessary since this is a breach of their T&C's.  Hilton quickly conjured up the proper cert and all was well! Despite the initial shadiness of the situation, Hilton did do the right thing and made this right.  Thanks Hilton!

And so we found ourselves on our way to Atlanta for the weekend.

Andrew enjoys his business class seat to Chicago

Taking a walk through Olympic Park

The Olympic Ring fountain

Nursing in the executive lounge, skyline behind.

It so happened that Grandpa Mike was driving Great Grandma and Grandpa back from Michigan to Florida on this very weekend, and Atlanta was right in their path!  They were able to stop and meet us at the hotel for a visit and a bite of lunch.  It was such a sweet time!

Grandpa Time!

Demonstrating the rolling... and chewing on toes.

After the family left on the last leg of their journey, Travis beat me handily at checkers.

This is just embarrassing.

Then we went to take in the Atlanta sights.  First stop was CNN world headquarters.  We took the tour and got to see a sound stage broadcasting live and another one (HLN) taping a future segment.  We saw two newsrooms, and got demonstrations of cool news technology, like the magic touch screen.  Andrew slept through most of the tour.

This is the longest freestanding escalator in the world - 8 stories tall and only connected at the top and bottom.

The CNN newsroom.  The director of operations is in the front practicing his golf swing.  Slow news day, I guess.

The next stop was World of Coca-Cola.  You don't realize how much a brand is a part of your life.  We aren't big pop drinkers, and yet it's amazing how Coca-Cola is just part of the fabric of growing up in America.  They had exhibits on the history of Coca-Cola itself, the branding and marketing through the years, and a full-up bottling facility bottling Cokes that you could take away.  Then they had a tasting room where you could sample Coke and other Coca-Cola products that are sold around the world: Green Melon from Thailand, Menthe from Africa, Bitter Lemon from England.

The inventor of Coca-Cola - a pharmacist

Coca-Cola product display. 

Bottling in action

The tasting room

We meandered back to our hotel, on the way searching for Underground Atlanta.  On the way we passed the park where they were holding an "Occupy Atlanta" protest/campout.

We found the Underground, but after dark it was pretty darn sketchy, so we headed back to the Peachtree Center and picked up pizza and stromboli to take back to our room.  That, along with freshly bottled Cokes and baseball made for a perfect evening.

The next day we had a tired boy.

We left the hotel and grabbed a rental car justified by US Airways' "Grand Slam" mileage earning promotion, and headed out to Stone Mountain in hopes of seeing the monument.  Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time before we had to leave to catch our flight home.  But we did get a nice walk in a beautiful park!  And as Grandpa Mike would say, "You have to leave something to come back for!"