Atlanta - Day 3

On Monday, we ventured downtown for the day. It was cold and blustery and we wondered if we had brought the cold weather from the north with us. Since we had heard horror stories about Atlanta traffic, and because we didn't want to pay big money to park in a parking garage, we decided to try public transportation. I had done my research and figured out that MARTA (Atlanta train & bus) offered visitors passes that made it affordable and easy to ride public transportation. It actually ended up being VERY easy and we enjoyed being able to ride from station to station to get to the various places we were going.

Denise waiting at a train station.

We started out by driving to a train station about 2 miles from our hotel that had free parking, then took the train to the Midtown station to the Federal Reserve Bank. I had read about their money museum on TripAdvisor. It ended up being one of the highlights of our trip. Unfortunately, since it was a government building, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the building. We had to show our ID and be issued a visitor pass to walk through the museum. The museum talked about the history of money, how the Federal Reserve works, and the function of the Federal Reserve banks throughout the country.

One interesting fact: the day we were there, the national debt was $6,839,564,838,148,81. That's 6 trillion dollars! I'm glad I am a better money manager than the government is!

The last section was the cash processing viewing area, where we could watch actual federal reserve bank employees at work sorting and counting money, (and staring at computer screens) and the "cash buses" moving money around. We watched a worker feeding $20 bills into a machine and couldn't quite figure out what it was doing. Every once in a while it would spit one out - rejected??? We weren't sure. We did see him actually put some tape on a $20 to repair it!!!

If you are homeschooling your kids, this would be a great educational resource, and we really enjoyed it too! You can take a virtual tour if you are interested. Another cool thing was that we got free packets of shredded money to take with us as souvenirs. I will try to remember to post a picture if I remember to take one!

The outside of the Federal Reserve Bank, the only thing I was allowed to take a picture of.

We got back on the train for our next stop, downtown, to the World of Coca-Cola. World of Coke is a visitor's center, tourist attraction, blatant advertising ploy, history and artifacts of the Coke brand, and overall an interesting place to go. We saw some cheesy movies, walked through a fascinating area of "milestones of refreshment" that showed the history of Coke, passed up the opportunity to have our picture taken with the Coke polar bear, watched a real bottling line at work, and ended up in the "Taste It" room, where we could sample over 60 of Coke's beverages from around the world. We got a "free" 8 oz bottle of Coke to take with us, and then had to exit through the Coca-Cola store, where they had the Coke symbol on about everything you could think of (and wanted you to buy it). I bought my standard souvenir item - a deck of cards - and a gift for a friend, and then we got out of there before we spent any more money.

Coke was originally marketed as a "wonderful nerve and brain tonic" !!

Coke signage and memorabilia in the "Loft."

Me in the lobby of the World of Coke, waiting for our tour to begin.

Some of the choices in the Taste It room:


and some that are more familiar:


I can say that I tried every single one of them, and some were much better than others. Diet Coke still rocks!

The free bottles of Coke.

The outside of the building with swarms of people waiting to get in. It was much busier when we left than when we arrived. Yeah for us!

Day 3 to be continued....