This week started out with our final day of Atlanta. We also spent some fun days playing with the boys (lots of Lego!) and and little outing, too.
Last week I promised to share the details from our trip to Atlanta, so here we go:
Sightseeing
We didn’t have a lot of plans when we landed in Atlanta, but we had a few things in mind. We visited the area called Sweet Auburn where the Martin Luther King, Jr. historical sights are. The National Park Service has a really good vistor center there and the ranger “church talk” was really informative. I also mentioned last week that we went to church at Ebenezer Baptist. It was a really hopeful and uplifting service. The congregation was encouraged to reach out to neighbors and build community…great advice for us all.
We also visited Coca-Cola World. Nathan went there as a young buck, but he says that everything about it is different, including the location. They have lots of history info and different advertising through the century+ that Coke has been around. There’s a fun room where you can smell different ingredients and try to identify them. The Coco-Cola company owns something like 3500 different drink brands from around the world. There’s a room at the end of tour where you get to taste an assortment of things from around the world. It was fun and the Centennial Olympic Park was nice to walk around.
We also visited two museums. The Atlanta History Center is excellent and has some really cool displays like a steam locomotive and various Olympic torches. They also house one of only two cycloramas in the United States. The other is at Gettysburg. The one in Atlanta is a giant, circular painting of one moment in time from the Battle of Atlanta. It was really interesting to hear the crazy journey that the painting took and all the restoration that has taken place. There was also a really good film about Stone Mountain, which is just outside of Atlanta and has a giant carving of Confederate generals on it. The film explores the sticky subject of monuments and memorials and where they fit into history and what they mean to us as our attitudes about things inevitably change over generations. It was educational.
The other place we visited was the Jimmy Carter Presidentail Library. This is the fourth Presidential Library we have visited, the second just this year. We have yet to be disappointed by one of these sites. They do such a good job of giving you a history of the president and the time in which he served and the challenges of that time. I don’t know about you, but when I learn about moments in history, I don’t usually get much of a deep dive into each topic or event. These libraries do a really good job of going deep into the President’s triumphs, failures, and challenges. We walked away with a great respect for Jimmy Carter’s presidency as well as all the good he and his wife did after leaving office.
Entertainment
We went to two shows. We saw the 50th Anniversary tour of A Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor and company sang and told stories and such for about 3 hours. It was a good show. The guy who does the sound effects, Fred Newman, is my favorite though. He’s hilarious. It’s been a while since we listened to the program, but going to the show brought back lots of good memories of listening with the kids on Saturday afternoons. That show also kept me company during my pregnancy with Alex when Nathan was working nights on the weekends and I was all alone.
We saw some comedy at a club called the Punchline. Alonzo Bodden was the headliner and he did a great show. On paper, he should not be the kind of comic that we are into, but he is just so down to earth and really funny.
One unexpected thing happened on Saturday morning. We could hear a bunch of kids outside. They were all in military uniforms and just kind of waiting around for something. As we walked out to go get on the metro, Nathan asked one of them what was happening and we learned that they were staging for the Veterans’ Day parade. As we walked along to the station, there were lots of cars and military vehicles ready for the parade, so that was kind of fun. Nathan loved the Corvettes.
Food
We had some really amazing food and some that was quite disappointing. We tried to embrace the fact that we were in the south, so we had chicken and waffles (that were really “croffles” or croissant/waffles) that was just ok. We had a sweet potato cheesecake that was truly yummy. Nathan had some delightful fish. One breakfast I had a delicious bowl of yogurt and granola and autumn-spiced apples and Nathan had really good eggs on mighty fine sourdough (oh how I miss baking sourdough). The biggest disappointments were the overpriced, mediocre dishes. Oh well…sometimes you get lucky. Actually, one of the best meals we had was here in our neighborhood in St. Louis on our way home from the airport. There’s a great little place just down the street that served us a mighty fine smash burger with a respectable salad and bowl of soup. Yum!
A Day Out with the Big Boys
We had great success getting to and from the airport here in St. Louis on public transportation. Since Teddy and Peter are so into trains and planes and things that go, we thought it would be fun to take them on a little adventure. We picked them up and stopped for some snacks, then we drove to the end of line for the light rail. We rode the train to another station and switched to the line that goes to the airport. We sat at the airport for a while and watched planes come and go while munching on pretzels and Pringles. Then we got back on the train and did the whole thing in reverse and stopped for pizza on our way home. It was a blast and just the thing for little boys. It’s really been a joy to be close by for a while.
One great thing about all the traveling that we have done this season is that we have had an extended autumn. We’ve been chasing it all over the country from the mountains of Utah in September to the hills of Ohio in October and now here in St. Louis in November. We have enjoyed the beautiful autumn colors all over the place. It’s been nice. Have a great week–do something nice for yourself and for someone else.