Happy Saturday!    I'm back from my trip to Atlanta and wanted to share with you all.    My primary purpose for going to Atlanta was to attend the Living Foods Institute, and I would be happy to tell you about that ... but it has nothing to do with historical fiction.

I was my first time in Atlanta (outside of many trips through the aiport) but unfortunatly I was tied up with attending the institute every single day I was there from 7:30AM to 6PM, which means that not much if anythong of sight-seeing value was open when I was available.   BUT, the Margaret Mitchell House was only seven blocks from my downtown Atlanta hotel, so on my last day there I snuck out early because as a fan of both the movie and the book of Gone With the WInd, I just HAD to see it.

My report:     It's small, but very interesting!   The "house" is really an apartment building, where Margaret and her husband lived in Unit #1 while she wrote over 90% of GWTW.   They have fully restored the small 3-room apartment to the appropriate time period in the early 30's.   A very nice guide led us through a 30-minute tour of the small museum and the apartment.   I learned lots of cool factoids about Margaret, the book and her life.

And they also have a room all about the movie.    It's also small, but contains some very important props from the movie (but not the green curtains dress, darn it, because that would have just been too cool for words).   And they have a two-hour documentary about the making of GWTW playing continuously.   I didn't get to see all of it due to time contraints, but I got to see a little about the casting .. and after the tour was over I saw the end of the documentary which was some of the Oscar presentations.   It was very touching to see Hattie McDaniel get her Oscar.   She was in tears. 

My seminar was for 10 days, but I only got to do 6 days this time and so have to go back to Atlanta sometime in the next 6-9 months for the remaining 4 days.   And this time I'm going to allow some time for sight-seeing  - probably only a day though.    Can anyone tell me what I should put on my sight-seeing agenda?

The Coca-Cola museum is lots of fun, especially getting to try all the international varieties that we don't get here in the states. I also really like the Atlanta Aquarium, and even though their zoo isn't huge, I love the panda house and the lemurs. Another thing that is cool is that these places aren't really very far apart.

: )

Depending on how early a start you get, and how long you're out, you should be able to do two in a day.