I just came back from working another conference in Atlanta - my third for this year. The great thing about this conference was that they had a social hour both nights. The first night I tried a local beer from the SweetWater brewing company called, "Georgia Brown." It was really good, but everyone must have thought so, because they ran out. So the second night, I tried another beer from the same company called, "The Hopsinator." I thought it sounded somewhat Halloween-ish. Wasn't as good as the Georgia Brown beer though.
I had a bit of free time on Sunday, so I toured the Coca-Cola Headquarters. It was somewhat interesting. I think they were going for a Disneyland-ish feel, but didn't really come close. When you first go in, they have several rooms filled with coke memorabilia. I think one of the best parts of that was seeing the original Normal Rockwell paintings that so many Coke advertisements were modeled after. I didn't realize Normal Rockwell painted in oils - huge ones, almost life-size.
We got to see the vault where they store the secret formula for coke. Only a few people have access to the vault (notice the hand-print scanner). One lady got too close to the vault when she was taking pictures and several alarms went off. They're serious about keeping that formula secret.
The last stop on the tour was the tasting room. We got to taste cokes from all over the world. Some of them were pretty nasty. Most of the kids on this tour headed straight to this room, so they were bouncing off the walls from all the sugary drinks. They gave us a souvenir bottle of coke to take home, but I didn't realize until the last minute that I couldn't get it past TSA (it was more than 3 oz).
On the way back, the Atlanta airport was all decorated up for Halloween. It was very cute, but a little creepy to think that this is where you have to go to rebook if your flight is canceled. But that's always a "ghoulish" experience anyway, so maybe they should leave the look up all year.
