Three Days In Atlanta

It's spring break and we're new to the South, so we decided to spend a few days exploring another Southern city: Atlanta. We arrived Thursday evening after a 3.5 hour drive.

Friday morning we enjoyed fantastic pancakes at Ria's Bluebird. Milo wandered over to the next table (which, thank goodness, also seated another toddler), proudly informed the folks there that he was wearing overalls (he continued to tell people about his overalls throughout the weekend, even when he wasn't wearing them) and invited them to join us on our trip to the aquarium. They politely declined.




The Georgia Aquarium, which bills itself as the world's largest aquarium, was pretty neat. Many of the exhibits include tanks of fish above and around you, which provide quite a different perspective than most aquariums. The beluga whales are amazing, as are the whale sharks. Milo really enjoyed the Japanese spider crabs and Calder the jelly fish and Asian small-clawed otters.



Later that day at bathtime, Milo and Calder made sure that the mirror in our hotel bathroom was totally "spotless." Milo sang, as he cleaned, "Cleaning lady, I'm a cleaning man, and I'm going to clean this tub as best as I can."



On Saturday we visited the High Museum of Art, which recently has aligned itself with the Louvre in order to present certain exhibitions with works of art on loan from the Louvre. We tried to enjoy "Decorative Arts of the Kings," the special exhibition from the Louvre displaying works commissioned by the last three kings of France, but Calder's continual wailing and flailing made that mostly impossible. There's just something about art museums that brings out the worst in Calder. Interestingly, his behavior improved slightly once we reached the contemporary art wing of the museum. After the museum we had lunch plans with our old friend Todd Janke, who now is a philosophy professor at Clayton College in Atlanta. Todd was asking Milo questions, such as "what is hermeneutics?" and gave him change for the right answers.

Late Saturday afternoon we spent a while playing at Piedmont Park, which was a couple of blocks from our hotel.



We spent a good part of Sunday at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. It is a lovely place, with a wonderful, imaginative, and expansive Children's Garden. Calder managed to soak himself in a puddle near a waterfall. I suppose I should be happy that he fell into a puddle rather than into one of the many ponds or waterfalls in the Children's Garden.





And Milo decided to push by many (sissy) children who were too afraid to charge down the slides as quickly as Milo wished. Only a few tantrums later and we were in our car on our way out of town. Okay, I exaggerate. We really did enjoy ourselves at the botanical garden. In addition to the kids' fun, there was a lovely orchid exhibit, as well as stunning glass impressions of orchids and endangered frogs from the Amazon. And, while we were catching our breath by the aquatic plant pool, one of the ducks actually laid an egg in her little nest in the center of the pool. This caught Milo's attention briefly, but then he went back to building a mountain of pebbles alongside the pool.



Perhaps the best part of our trip to Atlanta was at the tail end, as we drove out of town. We stopped at this place called "Your Dekalb Farmers Market," which really puts any other old supermarket (even Whole Foods) to shame. Apparently the place started as a tiny farmers market and is now about the size of a Walmart, half of which is produce, and really good produce, including the unusual stuff, at that. The prices were good and we did our food shopping for the week there. Never before have I seen such a diversity of people, both of nationality and class, shopping at the same supermarket. Justin was sad to leave the market and I was just pissed that I would have to drive 3.5 hours to shop there again.

Happy Spring Break!