Atlanta Trip 2: Country Mouse in the City

This belongs as part of the traveling post I published yesterday, but the story is so good that I thought I'd rather give it its own post.  Now, I'm not uninitiated when it comes to travel - I've been around the block a time or two!  But it's been several years since I've flown through a large airport, and in that time I've gotten really used to small town life.  So Elias and I were both just completely stunned to descend through the clouds into the Atlanta airport, which is HUGE!!!  SO MANY airplanes going every direction.  Honestly, I was overwhelmed; Elias was just impressed.

So then we got off the airplane and the number of people in the terminal was just unbelievable.  (This was 5pm on a weekday, so peak travel time for businesspeople, I'd guess.)  We followed the crowd and the signs that pointed us toward baggage claim.  I didn't even realize that there were concourses and we'd have to take a TRAIN through 4 concourses just to get to the exit!  Elias was, of course, thrilled that not only was there an airplane, but there was also going to be a train!

The best part of the story comes, though, before we get to the train.  To reach the platform, we had to take an escalator down, and as we're lining up to get on it, I realize that Elias has probably never been on one before and wouldn't know what to do.  There are no escalators in our small town, that's for sure!  So I was explaining to him that it was stairs that moved us down, and he just needed to step on and stand still.  HE. LOVED. IT.  Seriously, the awe on his face was priceless.  There were so many people and I was juggling a preschooler and two backpacks, so no way I could've gotten a photo.  It was so great, though, that we were drawing attention from the masses around us, and people were cracking up when they realized that this child has never seen an escalator before!  It was a classic case of country mouse coming to the big city!!!

We of course enjoyed the train, and then got to take another escalator back up to baggage claim, and many people were once again entertained by how much my child loved the escalator.  He, in fact, asked to do it again, but that just wasn't gonna happen.

Who knew, though, that in all our exciting travels that day, the part my 3-year-old would love the most was the escalator?!!?!

The next day, we visited a mall that had escalators, so Grandma took the opportunity to snap a photo of Elias on his new obsession:

We took every opportunity we could find on our trip to ride an escalator, sometimes just over and over again.  To this day, his eyes light up when he hears the word "escalator."  Ah, it's the simple pleasures in life.  :)