12/11/2021
Today we did as much of the touristy stuff that the weather would permit. We first went to Truist Park, the Braves stadium. Pretty much immediately after we took our first pictures it started raining. It started rain HARD as we got closer to downtown. We wanted to go to Olympic Park and Coke World along with the Hard Rock Cafe. I found a subway station close to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Falcons stadium. It worked out that they have free parking at the station too. We found out that if there is any kind of bad weather, everyone in the city freaks out and forgets how to drive.
Normally I would’ve walked from where we parked, but the rain wasn’t supposed to stop until the evening. We hopped on the subway and went to the core of the city. First we went to the Hard Rock so I could get a pin. After that the rain let up a little bit so we were able to walk comfortably to World of Coke and Olympic Park. We walked through the park before going to the museum.
I was at the World of Coke when I was little, but I heard they did a complete remodel in the 90’s so it’s mostly different I guess. I don’t really remember. As you go in the first stop is in a gallery of Coke memorabilia from the 1800’s to today.
After a presentation spotlighting some of the more interesting items we were led into a movie theater to watch a movie that wasn’t all that memorable. After the movie they let us free to do a self guided tour. In the main hall there was a place to take a picture with the coke polar bear, the smelling room, the tasting room, another movie theater, a miniature bottling demonstration, tons of memorabilia, store, and the recipe vault. The smelling room was kinda interesting. There were scent boxes that you could make puff out certain smells. The most interesting part for me was the bottling demo. They had robots! The tasting room was alright. They had some soda’s from different countries. The few that I tried were all gross. They had a dedicated room for regular Coca-Cola. They had the perfect, obviously, mix of carbonation and syrup. As close as McDonalds comes, it’s not quite like from the factory.
I was hoping to get a pin at the store, but they only had two and they were both dumb, so I got a sticker instead. After we got done at World of Coke the rain had stopped and Ashley’s friend Kem said that we should check out the Underground and how great it was. We walked over there and unfortunately it was dead. The few shops that were there were mostly closed. The main thing that was open was the Banksy exhibit. That didn’t interest me so we looked for a place that was showing the UFC fights. I found a place in Midtown that sounded cool, Pour.
Pour was a taproom that you pour all of the drinks yourself. They gave us a wristband that activates the tap and once activated you pour as much or little as you want. They had three floors and different beers and wine on each floor. They were showing the fights on the third floor so we found a spot at the bar. The beers averaged around $7 for 13 ounces. It was kinda spendy. We were going to eat there too, but a couple next to us ordered and their food came out cold twice. We decided to move on to somewhere cheaper.
I found a dive bar that was close and we cruised over there and found a spot that we could park for the night. We walked to The Righteous Room. This was a great dive bar. They had pitchers of Miller High Life for $6. Their food was amazing too. We split a chicken quesadilla and some wings. The wings were fine, but the quesadilla was amazing. I would eat one at least three times a week. We finished watching the fights, closed the place down, and turned in for the night.