Hello, Atlanta!

As most of you know, Mike accepted a job in GA about a month ago. It was a risk-taking decision, but so far, so good! He loves what he's doing and really happy with it :) The downside is that he's been there for a few weeks, so I flew up to Atlanta this past weekend to see him and to visit Atlanta for the first time. We had a blast! What a great city Atlanta is!

We stayed at the Renaissance hotel in midtown, which was gorgeous! We had a top floor room with a really great view. I flew in Saturday morning and we went to Coca Cola World (Coke is based in Atlanta). This place was really neat - they had tons of old paraphernalia dating back to the 1800s.

We made a new friend

They also had some cool interactive stuff to play around with.

We got "bubble-ized!"

The famous red couch from American Idol.

Up until last Thursday, the vault with the original recipe for Coca Cola was kept at the SunTrust building downtown. They finally moved it to Coca Cola World in honor of Coke's 125th anniversary. You're only allowed to be in this room for one minute and if you get too close to the vault, an alarm goes off telling you to please move away.

They also had a sampling room with over 60 different kinds of sodas from around the world - all made by the Coca Cola company - and you get unlimited samples. If you've ever been to Epcot and visited the soda sampling room, it's the same concept except WAY bigger. Each kiosk is broken down by region. The Italian soda called Beverly was, by far, the worst one. Way to go, Italians...

After 63 samples...

After we were done, we grabbed lunch and headed to SweetWater Brewery to meet up with Mike's friend Scott and his wife. We love SweetWater beer but unfortunately, it's not that easy to find. They sell them all over GA and have just started branching out to other places. The furthest south you can find it is in Gainesville. The brewery there is great - for $10, you get a pint glass to keep, plus you get 6 tickets to have your glasses filled up with any of the beers they have on tap, along with a brewery tour. It was packed but a cool place to hang out.

After that, we went back to the hotel, went out for dinner and some drinks and then crashed early. We had both been up early that day so we were beat.

The rooftop deck of our hotel.

Someone turned their tree into a snowman. Love it!

Mike and his friend, Scott. Naturally, we can't go anywhere without finding a Gator bar.

On Sunday, we got up and went to brunch and walked around downtown Decatur for a little while. We drove around some of the neighborhoods and then went to Piedmont Park - kind of like a mini Central Park.

Later that night after dinner, Mike took me to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see their Christmas lights display. It was so pretty and a great way to end the weekend! It felt very festive too :)

Of course, Mike found his orange and blue!

And I found my green and gold!