Fun times in the ATL...

I can easily say this weekend was a great one! J and I headed up to Atlanta. We left Jacksonville at 8 a.m. on Friday. J made a pretty good driver:

So focused. So serious. 

We made  great time, until we hit an accident RIGHT outside of downtown Atlanta. Stinks, but we ended up getting to the hotel around 5:00 p.m. Our room was TINY but still fabulous. I especially loved that our pillows were marked:

I prefer soft pillows, so this worked out for me. The bed was comfy too. (Important factor right?)

That night, I bought tickets for us to go the Braves game. J is a huge Braves fan. I was bummed at missing the Opening Ceremony, but being at the exact location of the Opening Ceremony of the Centennial Games in 1996 (say THAT three times fast!) was pretty awesome.

Olympic rings logo right before you get to Turner Field

That would be the 1996 Olympic cauldron. You know, the one that Muhammad Ali lit? I was in total awe. I remember watching those Olympics as an 11 year old. SO NEAT!

The game? Oh that was pretty fun too. The Braves won (not going to say yay to that, I'm a Mets fan!) but I'm glad they did for J.

 I had my two favorite ballpark treats:

Chili cheese dog!

Ice cream in a helmet!

It's not a baseball game without those treats! The ice cream was the perfect treat on a hot and humid day.

The next day, J surprised me with tickets to both the Georgia Aquarium and the CNN Studios. He's really an amazing guy; I'm a lucky girl.

Being the nerd that I am, I loved the CNN tour. We even got to see them filming some of the live shows. The CNN center is HUGE!

Like I said, HUGE! I took a picture of J riding North America's largest free standing escalator. The bottom two pictures are the newsrooms for CNN and HLN. Pretty impressive.

After that it was aquarium time. To get to the aquarium, we walked through Centennial Park.

Love the Olympics!

The Georgia Aquarium is the largest in the world. They have quite the collection of animals, including whale sharks.

He was half the size of this huge glass window. Such a sight to take in! J and I saw lots of other neat things as well.

Like beluga whales! Baby beluga, oh baby beluga...

These photos just don't do them justice!

J was bummed we missed the piranha feeding. :) If you look carefully in the starfish pic, you'll see this eel hiding out. Instantly reminded me of Flotsam and Jetsam from The Little Mermaid. You know, Ursula's henchmen?

Speaking of Disney, I found Dory! Best part was that I was NOT the only one singing "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!"

Found some super cute river otters. One kept getting mad at the other for making him drop his rock.

I'm dying from the adorableness!

I'm so glad I got to go to both of these places. Like I said J = awesome boyfriend. Oh and on the way out spotted these two amazing shirts:

Like I said, AWESOME right?

Of course, the whole reason we went to Atlanta was to go to DCI Southeastern Championship. J is a drummer (it's not his main job but it's definitely his passion.) He was in a drum corps himself and loves to watch it. I had no idea what it was before I started dating him! I do like the shows though (even if I can't really tell why one particular show is better than the other.)

The group that won is the one on the bottom left corner, the one with the crazy horses. They're called the Blue Devils and they are a top corps. I didn't really get their show, because I was too distracted by the horse props. Why are there horses? Why are their outfits hanging on them? Are the horses supposed to be attacking each other? I'm so confused! <---the various thoughts running through my head the entire time.

My favorite show was by Santa Clara Vanguard. They had a starry night theme, as in Van Gogh. The color guard had different parts of the Starry Night painting on their outfits, and their flags also had different parts of the painting. At the end, their flags came together to recreate the painting. The music was beautiful too!

All in all a really fun day. We came home on Sunday and I relaxed and enjoyed some Olympics!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Linking up for YOLO Monday and Weekend Update!