Olympic torch

I still remember the 1996 Olympic torch relay through Providence and Malcolm Grear inviting Peter to hold the torch that he designed. Today we explored the 21 acre Centennial Olympic Park, the focal point for the Atlanta Summer Olympics. Lots of other people were enjoying it too, as it is a kind of cross-roads in downtown Atlanta and the Georgia Aquarium borders the park.

Beautiful Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta.

One small side garden has four of these massive granite (naturally!) blocks with the names of all of the Olympic athletes carved on them according to their event. This side of one of the blocks has the men's and women's 4 IM swimmers. Nice tribute to the athletes.

We were in downtown Atlanta to go on an Inside CNN Studio Tour. The CNN building also borders another side of the Olympic Park. The tour lasted 55 minutes and we came away very impressed with the size of the CNN operation (over 4,000 employees, 2,000 of them in Atlanta), and with all the details that go into broadcasting CNN around the world.

The atrium of the CNN World Headquarters building.  We began our tour inside that globe.

Another view of the atrium.

We got to the globe by ascending this 8-story escalator (192 feet long), the longest unsupported escalator in the world.

The floor of the atrium has the shape of the continents of the world in black tiles. I think you can just make out South America.

Our main stop this afternoon was the Georgia Aquarium, a gift of the founder of Home Depot, Bernard Marcus.  Opening in 2006, it is the world's largest aquarium. It is a 9-acre state-of-the-art facility with a staggering 8 million gallons of both fresh and salt water that contains more than 100,000 different animals, representing over 500 of the planet's marine species.

The aquarium is divided into several marine-life areas. One of my favorites is the Cold Water Quest, a habitat for creatures that thrive in the world's icier seas. Here we saw beluga whales, California sea lions, a giant Pacific octopus and Japanese spider crabs. The OceanVoyager is one of those exhibits where you can walk under the water and see the fish swimming through an acrylic ceiling. Stingrays, whale sharks (the largest species of fish in the world), and groupers swim through this 100-foot long saltwater tunnel. Here are just a few of the pictures I took.

Sea horses.

 A tiny section of this massive wall-sized exhibit of the largest living reef exhibit of any aquarium in the world. Living corals and thousands of colorful reef fish.

A manta ray and  whale shark.

In the Coldwater Quest there were these intriguing creatures - sea dragons.

Turtle.

Albino crocodile in the Georgia Explorer exhibit room.

There was also a dolphin show called "Dolphin Tales" that purported to be "a moving tribute to the connection between humans and dolphins, incorporating actors, amazing effect and an exhilarating musical score, all to educate and entertain the audience and create a memorable experience for all ages." It is pretty amazing what these animals can be trained to do. However, I don't know that I really like the idea of "training" wild animals for entertainment.