Along the Way

We flew out of Salt Lake on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Atlanta.  We decided to have a long layover there, to break up the traveling and include a little sightseeing.  Our bags ended up NOT being checked all the way through to Lagos as we had planned, something about bag restrictions and possible terrorist threats.  So we ended up hauling ALL our bags up the stairs (Matt had an opportunity for a workout!) and onto the public train into Atlanta.  I imagine we were quite the sight.  We had to keep asking our way since we thought maybe it wasn't a great idea to haul out our iPads in the middle of the night in abandoned train stations and downtown big city areas.  Thankfully, the police force was on our side with some directions and our hotel really was quite easy to find.  If you ever have a layover in Atlanta the train is super easy to catch downtown and you just find yourself smack in the middle of all these hotels and around the corner from the Olympic Park and Aquarium.  It really makes for a great mini vacation!  The next day (minus the bags) we explored a bit.  We walked through the park and then had some breakfast.

Then we spent the whole rest of the day at the Georgia Aquarium. We saw the whole thing but it seriously took all day and we could have slowed down a bunch too.  First we watched the dolphin show, which was a-MAZ-ing.  Seriously.  It was so beautiful. I literally had tears in my eyes.  Um, I may have been the only one. I marked it up to the beauty but of course, I was exhausted and a teensy stressed out so that may have had something to do with it.

I crawled through a little tube thing to get up close with some South African penguins.  I was the only adult in there without a kid to be my excuse.  Oh well!

A main attraction of the aquarium is this viewing window:

Behind this 2 foot thick acrylic wall is a football field sized fish tank.  And some amazing whale sharks, which are the world's largest fish. Their mouths are 4 feet wide!

There are 4 in the tank in all.

It was a wonderful way to relax (minus the crying at the dolphin show) and get ready for our long flight to Lagos.  After we collected our bags we walked UPhill back to the train station.  On our way in it had seemed so easy to get to the hotel.  We needed our exercise anyway!

When we got back to the airport we saw a couple with a mobile literature stand just outside, so we visited with them a few minutes.  It made us so happy to see brothers and sisters along the way on our journey!  In order to get as much exercise as possible I refused to take the train around the airport and we walked the whole way to our terminal and then walked the whole terminal up and down. After some dinner I made some final phone calls to my family before we got on the plane and then it was time to take off!