I had a jam-packed schedule of events for our trip to Atlanta.  I’m not saying it was planned to the minute, but I did have an estimate of how long I thought the various activities would take.

Funny thing about plans…

My sister was joining us in Atlanta (also staying at Kris’ house), and I called her after we arrived to see how much longer she would be.  The idea was to go to Stone Mountain that evening where there was a laser show.  Fortunately, she asked so many annoying forward-thinking questions about things like where we would eat dinner, that I went to the website and realized that they did not, in fact, have a laser show on Friday evening, their Labor Day weekend beginning on Saturday, not Friday night.

Change of plans.

I looked at the different places I wanted to go, and saw that nothing was open on Friday night, except for the Aquarium, which, to our great luck, was open until 10 pm on Fridays through the summer, and included a cash bar and live band.  My kind of party.

Barb had eaten at a place called Mary Mac’s Tea Room on a previous trip to Atlanta, and she called a friend of hers who lived not too far outside of town and had him meet us there.  Food was great.  They put us at a huge round table, which is so much better than a long rectangular one. 

After dinner, we headed to the Aquarium.  The place was lively, but not crowded.  No line at the door for tickets, not too crowded getting in to see the exhibits.  I did not appreciate this nearly as much then as I did the next day when I passed the Aquarium several times.  Each time we went by, the courtyard was packed with huge masses of people shuffling forward to get a ticket.  Thank goodness there was no laser show at Stone Mountain the night before.

Walking to the Aquarium.  Everybody way in front; Mary lagging.

I’ve been to plenty of aquariums, and this one was just fine.  It’s the largest aquarium in North America, so it pretty much had everything. 

In with the fish.

Fish-eyed.

We didn’t see the dolphin show, but we did watch them in their tank.  One came up to Jenny and stared at her.  They really are neat.  You wonder what they are thinking.

She kept trying to hide.  Drove me nuts.

Petting the anemones.

I really liked going into the penguin exhibit.  You have to crawl, which is no fun, but in one part there are places you can stand up and be at eye level with the penguins.  The best part of this was being outside the tunnel and watching the penguins watch the humans pop up.  I imagine they thought the humans were pretty neat, maybe even wondered what the humans were thinking…

Fish tunnel.

Pretty big dude.

Uh, Mom, I think I’m a little too close to these guys.

Even though we left the aquarium late, we still had to tell certain children to settle down and go to sleep. 

My favorite part.  SIT and watch.