A Beverage Museum in Atlanta
By Charlie. Filed in Travel |
If you’ve come to Atlanta, Georgia, and you’re an American, it almost seems a rite of passage that you should go to the World of Coca-Cola Museum. The soft drink has been around since 1886 when an Atlanta pharmacist named John Pemberton mixed together a dark liquid the color of caramel and took a couple of doors down to Jacobs’ Pharmacy; there, he mixed the solution with carbonated water and everyone at the drug store that day agreed they liked the taste. Frank Robinson, the bookkeeper for Pemberton named the drink Coca-Cola, and wrote it out by hand with flourishing penmanship. The famous logo of Coca-Cola was born and for the first year Pemberton sold at five cents a glass a total of nine glasses a day. In 1888, Pemberton died, and the company was sold to a man whose name few Americans will know, Asa Griggs Candler, for less than three thousand dollars. Today, the company makes ten billion gallons of syrup a year to mix with carbonated water, an astonishing rise in fortune.
Whether you’re staying in a hostel or in luxury in the Atlanta hotels, the World of Coca-Cola Museum seems worth a tour. I recall the Coca-Cola Museum in Las Vegas (long since closed) and how much fun it was to wander around the various Coca-Cola items in the gift shop and to do taste-testing of Coke products most of us have never heard of before. You may find the exhibit a bit of an advertising for a corporation, yes, but it’s also a part of American history. If you have a bad back, I’d be sure to avoid the 4-D experience or sit in the non-motion chairs (even at the risk of the tour guide asking in front of everyone whether or not you wish to sit in the non-motion chairs; you’ll thank yourself later for not going through any pain).
You’d think for a drink that’s so ubiquitous, most people would know where the product originates. But even a visitor from South Carolina (fairly close to Atlanta, Georgia, as states go) didn’t realize where Coke had its humble beginnings. He won’t make that mistake after his visit to this commercial-oriented museum.
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Tags: luxury in the Atlanta hotels, World of Coca-Cola Museum