via @tellyworth.

Especially funny to me considering my visit to a lovely, countryside Polish castle in the spring of 2001. I saved my ticket, so that, upon my return to the States, I was able to label each of my photographs with the castle’s name as printed on the ticket: “Castle Jednorazowego Wstępa”.

Only later did I realize that I had painstakingly marked each picture as “Castle Single Admission”.

Castle "Jednorazowego Wstępa" a.k.a. Niedzica Castle

To begin my virgin journey to the “deep” South, we flew into Atlanta to get a first hand look at the origins of the South’s (and, perhaps the US’s as a whole) greatest contribution to modern society since Mark Twain: Coca-Cola. Despite what prejudice might suggest about a museum devoted to a massive international corporation, the World of Coca-Cola is a pretty interesting place. Its “centerpiece” is a serpentine time line winding around the walls and detailing the evolution of Coke’s place in American life, its Alexandrian international conquest, and the advertising that got it there. Various rooms also hold exhibits on early and modern bottling practices, small theaters showing classic commercials, and displays of Coca-Cola inspired art. At the end of the museum is a tasting room where I was able to try a dozen or so different Coca-Cola owned sodas including some very strange flavors of Fanta and the infamous Beverly. There’s also a gift shop.

In addition to our Coca-Cola pilgrimage, we also visited the Georgia Aquarium, the King Center, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, and Stone Mountain.

The aquarium offered an incredible display of whale sharks (in a 6+ million gallon tank) and a bad-ass video of an octopus squidging itself through a small pipe, but was underwhelming on the whole given the $24 price tag. The King center was much more interesting; visiting gave a good account of the civil right movement and was a pretty powerful experience. The Fernbank had both a display of the world’s largest dinosaur skeletons (making the bus trip out there worthwhile) and a distinct lack of electricity while we were there (making the trip sort of a bust). At Stone Mountain, we saw the talented glass blowers, entertaining blacksmith, and, of course, the vast relief of Davis, Lee and Jackson that defies complete appreciation due to the lack of any way to get a feeling of scale for the immense, three acre carving.