First visit was to the Georgia Aquarium.
While my previous visits to aquariums have been either to (a) the one in Mumbai or (b) the sea world in Singapore. But this one, considered the largest in the world, was unique in its own way! While a lot of websites (wanting to sell a City Pass) quoted the entrance fee as $ 35.99, it was in reality, $ 24.00. Although a bit steep, I personally thought it was worth it, considering the variety of aquatic species that one could view out here.
The place is well organized with five main viewing areas: (1) Ocean Voyager that takes you on a sidewalk through a glass tunnel with all sorts of fishes swimming overhead, including whale sharks. We also got to view these divers who were cleaning the debris off the glass. Sad could not take any pictures due to the glass covering. (2) Tropical Diver had varied colourful fishes including Nemo and Dori!! (3) Georgia Explorer which has a touch pool – yes, we could actually touch the fishes with strict instruction to use only index and middle fingers! This was fun but the pool was a bit low and was funny how parents had to dangle their kids so they could reach the fishes. (4) Coldwater Quest which was my favourite site, seeing these Beluga Whales swimming in perfect synchrony. They seemed to prefer some sort of new age music because that was the only area in the aquarium that played a soothing instrumental. 
(5) River Scout was more interactive, in the sense that it had a lot of creative aquarium windows around as you walk through. There is also a 3-D movie that I skipped but overall, it was an enjoyable visit.
Next visit was to the World of Coca-Cola, Aquarium’s next-door neighbour! Unlike what I expected it to be, this is not the actual Cola factory, instead a permanent exhibit of the history of the Coca Cola Company. The visit begins in the Lobby area where large bottle of Coca Cola are made of different materials from across the world. Thereafter, we enter into a brightly lit ‘red’ room that features advertising artefacts dating back in history. Our famous Thanda Matlab was there too!
We then went into a theatre to view a 3-D movie, rather an animated documentary called Happiness Factory. This is supposedly Coca-Cola’s key advertising campaign – Coke Side of Life. Post that, we are pretty much left to walk around the museum, with various attractions: (1) Take pictures with the Mascot – Cola Bear. (2) Bottle Works to view how the bottling line functions. They produce the Cola here that is given to each visitor at the end of the tour, with current date on it. (3) Milestones area that has all the advertising artefacts of the company. (4) Connections, which was a funny area with visitors listing ‘stories’ of their experience with Coca-Cola! It was quite intriguing to read them and at some point, I gave up! Did not realize how a drink as this can really influence your life however, it is indeed a reality (sad?) to see the impact it has on the culture of the country and around as well. (5) Theatre, an informal one, showcasing short films on memorable advertisements and animations of Coca-Cola across the ages. (6) Taste it where we can actually taste literally 50 odd products offered by the Coca-Cola Company worldwide. This also included the recent favourite – Coca Cola zero and from India, Sprite Ice!! 
This was the best part of the tour because visitors flocked to choose drinks from the fountains. Averse to aerated drinks, I tasted the awful one, Beverly and my favourite – Sprite. It was interesting to note how different the same product may taste in different countries. (7) Cola Store that features attractive products we could purchase. Funny, how coca-cola was advertised in unbelievable products like lingerie, curtains, earrings, et al!!!
Considered the Mecca of journalism, CNN Center, headquartered in this city, was one of our priority visits.
We took the 50-minute tour on behind-the-scenes of the functioning of this 24-hour news network. Like the Cola tour, there is quite a bit of marketing and self-promotion in this tour, including the so-called ride on the nation’s largest indoor free-standing escalator, 
however we thoroughly enjoyed it. We got to see how the news reports know their lines while looking straight into the camera, how the weather maps appear behind the meteorologist, and the graphics of how the weather reports are projected on the ‘green screen’. We also got a bird’s view of the control room. Like in all attractions, this one ended into the gift shop – Turner Store – to buy memorabilia, etc.
While there are other sites to visit too, we could cover these during our trip. Most of our local travel was through the MARTA – Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. This was super-convenient and we had no trouble accessing the local sites through this. While considered a pretty decent city, typically an American one, I personally did not think too highly of this place. Overall, I am glad I got to visit this city for what it has to offer, I am not sure I would like to live here. If I do get to visit Atlanta again, it would indeed be for a good reason.
