Travels in the South

Welcome back friends to another edition of Travels in the South.  We have been talking about our visit with our great friends Bill and Jean from Canadian Cats.  If you have missed the previous editions, please check them out here:  Red Lobster; Fogo de Chao; Stately Oaks; Spa Day. World of Coca-Cola Part I, World of Coca-Cola Part II. World of Coca-Cola Part III, The Varsity.

Are you having fun my friends sharing in the different things that my mom/dad and Bill/Jean got to explore during the trip to the south?  Well today, we are going to talk about another tour that my mom and Bill went on.  Jean and dad decided to sit out on this one and have deep conversations while mom and Bill toured.  Why?  Because this one involves EIGHT flights of stairs.

Yep you read that right. EIGHT flights of stairs and mom and Bill felt every single step towards the end of the tour.

But I’m getting ahead of myself like I seem to do at times.  What tour did they go on here in the south?  Of course it was the CNN tour located at One CNN Center, Atlanta, Georgia. This is actually huge letters that are standing outside of the front door when you enter into the CNN Center.  Cool huh?

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Mom and Bill were pretty lucky because they walked up, purchased tickets and were able to go directly on the tour.  It’s a 50 minute walking tour that starts off at a huge escalator.  That’s right, to get to the tour you start off at the top and walk your way down.  Now this picture of the escalator in the atrium absolutely does not show the justice of it going almost straight up.

In fact, this escalator is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest freestanding (supported only at the ends) escalator in the world.  Does that put any fear into your head?  Because I’ll tell you, mom grabbed on to the railings and Bill several times for support on this escalator that takes you all the way to the top to start the tour.

Here’s another shot of the escalator once you get all the way to the top.  Can you tell from this picture how that escalator goes straight up and how it can be so long?

And that blue blob at the top – snorts.  That’s the ‘world’ that you enter into the CNN tour.  It’s really creative.  And the building in the back of the picture – that is the Omni Hotel.  See inside of the CNN Center it is huge!  There is also a full food court downstairs, and police precinct, the hotel and I can’t tell you how many offices.  It’s HUGE in this place.  I kept telling mom she should take me as dad’s seeing eye pig but she wouldn’t go for it.  tsk-tsk – the places I could have gotten into!

Now this is not the best picture because I took a picture from a picture that mom/Bill got from the tour.  Once they made it to the top of the escalator, CNN saw the spark that Bill and mom had and immediately hired them for the CNN desk.

I mean come on – with mom’s southern accent and Bill’s Canadian accent – just think of the places they could go – snorts. I think I could see a new morning crew coming at you full of laughs and jokes.

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During the tour, mom and Bill got to see many, MANY rooms filled to capacity like the one in this picture.  Mom even asked the tour lady once exactly how many televisions were in the CNN Studios.  The tour guide said she couldn’t even tell mom a number – there were that many.  But an interesting piece of information mom did get.  With all of the televisions, lights, cameras and computers, CNN’s electric bill is over $500,000 a month.  Doesn’t make your electric bill look too bad now does it?  Snorts.

And while they were doing the tour, Bill and mom got to meet some famous peeps like Ted Turner, Mike Rowe and Anderson Cooper.  Okay maybe ‘meet’ is a stretch of the truth but they got to see some great pictures of them throughout the tour.  And that brings me to another thing.  As the tour is happening and you are walking around the studios, you are constantly being supervised by security.  Go ahead and ask me why I know that… because someone – coughs and oinks Bill and mom – didn’t stay with the group one time and had to be redirected.  Snorts – they were such shutterbugs!  And at the end of the tour, it drops you off in the CNN Store as well as the Cartoon Network store.

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