Atlanta

My first "Business Trip"

My company sent me to Atlanta for eight days for some training. I'm actually going back this week for an additional three days of training. I'd never been to Atlanta before so I was very excited! Everyone kept calling it Hotlanta but it was neither hot (temperature) nor *hot (like Paris Hilton would say). It was pretty fun being in a new city, driving a rental car and staying in a hotel room. It was weird eating dinner by myself, but with all of the yummy restaurants around, I couldn't complain!

My hotel room was pretty nice. Here is a tour if you are interested in seeing my suite... (yeah i was bored enough to record a tour of the room.)

My hotel was right behind a mall- which was a great thing for me! I could easily walk there and go shopping or just walk around.

Over the weekend I did the touristy stuff with this really cool lady who was doing our training. Paula, who was also from California and I went to The World of Coca-Cola, the Aquarium (which happens to be the world's largest), and a tour of CNN. Everything was very close, in walking distance of each other. The weather was really nice that day. Most days I was there it was cloudy/rainy but we had beautiful sunshine that day.

The world of Coca-Cola


This was the "tasting room". There were stations set up such as North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America with all kinds of coke products and you could help yourself. Some were pretty good and others were incredibly disgusting. I choked on a couple of them... literally.

The cute Coca-Cola Polar Bear. This guys little eyes blinked and mouth moved. He was sooo cute!

A picture from the beautiful aquarium

There's a story behind this one:

So we went on the CNN Tour, and security is super tight, they wouldn't allow photos; they even made you turn your phone completely off. I was bummed because I really wanted a picture there, because I did broadcast journalism in college and this place was very exciting to me.

One of the first stops on the tour was this mock studio where our tour guide explained to us how the teleprompter worked (I of course already know all this, having worked the teleprompter in my internship at the TV station in Vegas) and other interesting things about the biz. Then they asked if anyone wanted to sit at the anchor desk and take a picture that we could purchase later. I was hesitant because I didn't want to hold up the group and have everyone on the tour stare at me while I took a picture at the news desk. But Paula encouraged me, "oh come on! you are having a great hair day." That was apparently all I needed to hear because the next thing you know I volunteered to take my picture at the desk. So I sit down in the rolly chair and situate myself at the desk (I must say I felt pretty comfortable there) and I struck my best news anchor pose, and as soon as they clicked the picture, EVERYONE on the tour started to laugh. I was so confused- I thought, "there must be something happening behind me or something," but I had a feeling that wasn't the case. So I addressed the group (yes, 40 complete strangers) from the news desk and asked, "why is everyone laughing at me?" and the girls who took their picture before me said, "it's because you looked so cute because you got all serious and professional when you took your picture." Then Paula basically told me the same thing. She said it looked like I knew what I was doing and it was funny to see me striking my pose. Ha ha ha. So I had to buy the darn thing of course, cost me more than the actual tour... but now I have a lovely souvenir. This is a picture of a picture, I think you get the gist.

Anyways... on to good eats:

I took this picture for Heather. Yes I had yummy Chick fil-A for dinner one night!

Why did I post this one sideways- oh well, I'm feeling too lazy to change it. This was breakfast in bed. Thank you room service! Yum!

Chili's (obviously) at the airport. At least I had my book to keep me company. BTW- 1776 was really good. I highly recommend it! Especially for all of you history nerds.

This was our office building. Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee. Literally it was right off of the Chattahoochee River!

It was completely surrounded by trees.