There are two things that surprise a traveler and three that make one shake one’s aching head: experiences that surpass the hype, overhyped experiences that don’t, and genuine patterns of bad business.
The Georgia Aquarium truly is a modern marvel.? It’s one of those buildings that’s twice as big inside as it looks outside, and every element of the experience blew me away.? (If only Micah were so impressed.? But ah, well.)? Because we had pre-ordered tickets through CityPass.com, we were actually inside, looking at the exhibits, a full half hour before the aquarium started selling tickets, and even the extensive television coverage a couple years ago, when the aquarium opened, didn’t prepare me for the sheer magnitude of the place.? The tunnel under the main deep-water exhibit was a bit gimmicky (but fun), but the grand viewing window, that 63-by-25-by-two-foot transparent acrylic panel (the largest such viewing window in the world) provided a view into the 6-million-gallon habitat that I could have watched all day.? Even Micah, with his need to do something (he can’t even vegetate in front of a video game or the TV most of the time), stayed and watched the grand show for quite a span.? There will be pictures coming when we return to Statham.
As a side note, I realize Bernie Marcus (who wrote a two-hundred-million-dollar check to build the aquarium) is no friend to organized labor, but neither was Andrew Carnegie or the Pharaoh, and I’m one of those folks who believes that the same person can disapprove of a benefactor’s politics but appreciate the monuments that stand to remain when the benefactor passes on to lie down with the ancestors.
The Atlanta Children’s Museum wasn’t nearly as impressive.? We got in without laying any money down because of our membership with the Gainesville Children’s Museum, and after a long day of looking at fish, Micah was ready to do some hands-on destruction, but the place’s website makes it out to be much bigger than the one-room affair actually is.? That said, it had the Rube-Goldberg-style play areas and the water table and the creative playgrounds that Micah needed to run off some pent-up energy, so I’m not complaining by any means.
Finally, after an afternoon swim and nap, we headed for the game between the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants last night.? The seats were good (almost dead center field, and only about fifteen rows from the fence), the game was good (a heck of an eight-inning shutout cut short by an inexplicable decision to yank Jair Jurrjens with two men down in the top of the eighth and a four-run lead), and the weather was great (the lowest humidity in Atlanta for a week, according to the radio).? But I made the mistake of trying to buy hot dogs.
When Mary, Micah, and I went to see the Braves back at the end of the school year the same thing happened.? I ended up in line for hot dogs for three full innings, and as my madness and anger built up, I watched as the teenage cashier took order after order, slowly because the cell phone never left her ear.? In retrospect, I’m impressed with the battery’s fortitude, but when the line to pay for hot dogs stacks up to seventeen deep, couldn’t the stereotypes about idiot teen fast food vendors turn off just long enough to cut the line down?
This time through, I had a senior citizen cashier, who proceeded to take my order, tell the man prepping the dogs what kind I wanted, and then disappear.? I mean he just flat wandered off with the line stretching back into the admission gate.? I happened to have a watch on, so I know for a fact that ten minutes passed before one of the men preparing the dogs asked me what I still needed.? I told him as patiently as I could that I needed my drinks and to pay for the food, and he shook his head.? “Did he wander off again?” he asked.? My first thought, of course, was, “Again?”? At both games, because Micah is a chicken-nugget-eating machine, I had bought him Chik Fil-A nuggets before securing more traditional ballpark food for Mary and me, and although their nuggets were overpriced (a box of nuggets or a hot dog at a Braves game costs about as much as a sirloin steak at Logan’s), they got to me fast.? Not the dogs.? Oh, no.? I’ve become convinced that the hot dog operation at Turner Field (which did this to me in the right field cheap seats back in May and in the center field middle-class seats in July) must be a subsidiary of Wendy’s.
Today, when Micah finally wakes up after a long night in post-game traffic, we’re hopping the MARTA bus to the Atlanta Zoo.? Pictures from all of these stops will likely go online Sunday or Monday.
