The Wife and I are big fans of the Chatanooga Aquarium (the worlds largest prior to the completion of the Atlanta aquarium), and still the world’s largest freshwater marine exhibit. Overall, we felt like the Tennessee Aquarium was probably superior in its aesthetics and the variety of marine life you could see, along with the design of the exhibits. The Georgia aquarium is much more kid friendly, with the exhibits all looping back to a main room in case you need food, restrooms, or a rest, but some of the exhibits don’t really give you a good view of the animals, or are small, or are positioned so that it’s hard to fight your way through a large crowd. The pod-style design of the Atlanta floorplan also means crowds aren’t linear like they are on the “River Walk” style of the Chatanooga exhibits, so you can feel very claustrophobic at times. Full disclosure: we went on a Sunday afternoon in Atlanta, and I think we visited on a Friday during the day in Chatanooga.

But.

The Atlanta Aquarium has a “Behind the Scene Tour” which lets you pay 40 bucks to get a tour behind all the exhibits and it was phenomenal.  The guided tour takes roughly an hour, and you’re in a small group that walks backstage and sees the medical facilities, kitchens for preparing fish food, the generators and pumps that help regulate water chemicals and cleanse the tanks, and topside of the world’s largest saltwater tank, home to several whales harks and a manta ray.  You also can see how a lot of the exhibits are put together and view the top of the coral reef display.  Pictures are allowed, and this opportunity really moves the Atlanta aquarium ahead of Chatanooga in my view.

These are some iPhone pictures that I managed to take while on the tour – enjoy!

• US Airways website is S-L-O-W.  Nice, but man, it’s slow.
• Their inflight entertainment system, in a word, sucks.  It runs Windows too – I got to stare at a blue screen of death for roughly 4 hours, after they shut down and rebooted the entire system three times.

Some thoughts from our time so far:

• The weak dollar sucks.  It was like a hundred bucks to take the nice train from Gatwick to Victoria station.
• London still has phone booths, everywhere.  It’s really odd seeing them, as I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen one in the US
• Sara doesn’t do very well with jetlag.  Especially when she has a cold.
• I don’t do very well in the cold.
• In England, bacon is “streaky bacon”.  Bacon in England is like ham or something.  I liked it, Sara says “gross”.
• If you ask what black pudding is, they’ll tell you, and then they’ll give you a free sample, which you then have to try.  I’ve had worse.
• Harrods is nuts – total pandemonium.
• Don’t let your Original Bus Tour pass expire at the end of a day when you’re cold, it’s dark, and you’re trying to get somewhere.
• My feet are killing me.

Some pictures: