Atlanta July 2008

I then travelled down to Manchester where I met Rachael, another Raleigh venturer who I was travelling around Atlanta, San Jose and New York with before/after Raleigh. We flew to Atlanta where we were staying at a hostel that used to be a brothel. We met some really funny people there and went out to the cinema one night with them. On another night we went to the Centennial Olympic Park to “Screen on the Green”, a giant cinema screen on the grass and watched ‘Footloose’. Everyone was really friendly; someone lent us a sleeping bag to lie on and others were giving us food! We visited the Coca-Cola factory which was interesting, mainly from an artistic point of view. There was a pop-art gallery, lots of huge coca-cola bottles with different designs on, movie advertisements from all over the world and a 4D movie on The Magic of Coca-Cola. I found some vegan hot dogs and vegan cookie-dough ice-cream which was a real treat! We visited the Martin Luther King centre. On getting to it, the area looked like a hurricane had passed through because of ruined houses and graffiti around. I thought it was because of thugs and vandals, but it turned out that a hurricane had actually passed through a couple of weeks previously! The centre contained stories of their fight for freedom which was fascinating. We saw where he was buried and the water feature for a memorial. We went to the Fox Theatre to see Oklahoma. A man was playing the organ before the show started. The theatre itself was spectacular, on the ceiling it looked as if we were looking at the sky, with stars and moving clouds! I had to double take to check we weren’t in an open air theatre! Above the top of the stage was a bridge design with lanterns hanging down on to the stage, lampposts going up into the “sky” with a castle like design around the sides. The musical was brilliant; it took a bit of time to get used to the accents but it was very funny when I understood what they were saying!