Sunday in Atlanta

We'd long decided that we wanted to visit the home of 24-hour, 24/7 news at CNN and get a bit of a backstage tour.  The journey there - courtesy of Geoff and Uber - was smooth, fast and full of proof that there are indeed, six degrees of separation between everyone in the world.  His daughter lives in Harrogate (one of Fiona's offices is there) and teaches at the University of Leeds (where I did my English degree).

We arrived at the enormous offices of CNN, which reminded me of GSK - atrium, food, echoing cathedrals to the god of media.

The tour was given by someone with a degree in journalism, hoping to fill a vacant position in production someday - which shows the strength of the saying 'Never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.

Fiona, staring at the longest unsupported escalator in the world, on which we travelled.

After a brisk and efficient tour where you were left impressed by the scale, but not much the wiser about how a story actually gets from a tweet to coverage by an anchor (all women under 35, slender and as permanent as the audience wants them to be), we left to meet Chris and Dan at Oakland Cemetery.

The guest of honour (so to speak) is Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With the Wind. She was under 50 when she died a decidedly unromantic death, being knocked over by a cab driver.

The last thing we did was to insist on seeing the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Actually, it was Karen, and although Dan did try a little gentle disuasion, Karen was having none of it - so go the Botanical Gardens we did. 

Let's not beat about the bush (see what I did there?) we could have saved ourselves the admission price and Karen's aching knees. It was disappointing - although the orchid house was very good. Atlanta has clay soil and a very hot climate and grass which turns brown in the autumn.  Most of the 'exhibits' were man-made scarecrows for Halloween. I think Kew need not worry.  Although these grasses were pretty....