Nassau, Bahamas Food #2: Bahamian Soda

This is the second post from my trip to the Nassau in The Bahamas. Restaurants were discussed in the last post, but today I'm talking about beverages. The Bahamas seem to get many variations of sodas that we don't get in the US, which are always interesting to try.

Barritts Ginger Beer was pretty prevalent. All the vending machines and shops seemed to carry this. It was like a ginger ale, only less sweet with a much stronger ginger flavor. I liked it a whole lot. Someone else who tried it found it disgusting.

Schweppes Grapefruit Soda was another soda that I was unfamiliar with. I normally think of Schweppes Ginger Ale, but didn't see any of that being sold in the Bahamas. This was nice, tart, and delicious. I'd take grapefruit soda over orange soda any day.

Bahamas Goombay Punch was in all the fountain drink machines in restaurants along with the standard Coke products. It was non-carbonated and tasted sort of like pineapple.

Goombay Fruit Champagne. Similar to the Goombay Punch, only this one was carbonated. Also pictured was a box of Coconut Cream Biscuits. It felt very British with the imported cookies from the UK. Except for the fact that I was eating them at a table in a dive shop right after getting off a snorkeling trip...

World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, GA

Coke Rewards. They are the codes hidden somewhere on the packaging of Coke products that you accumulate and can trade in for stuff. I don't drink much soda, but I've amassed lots of these points over the time period that Coke Rewards have been offered. My problem is that I don't want the majority of the stuff that I can get by redeeming my points. When I knew I was going to Atlanta and saw that tickets to the World of Coca-Cola were available, I decided to trade in some of my points for a free visit to the soda museum.

I really didn't know what to expect with the World of Coca-Cola. I figured the museum would be a big advertisement for Coke, but advertisements disguised as museums are fun sometimes. The World of Coca-Cola started with a weird animated movie that seemed to have very little to do with soda, besides giant Coke bottles in the background. There was a 4-D movie that was so unpleasant that is seemed like whoever made it went to the Orlando theme parks and took the worst parts of all of our 3d movies and combined them into a horrible eight minute show. There were disappointing exhibits like an example bottling plant that wasn't working and an exhibit about the top-secret Coke recipe that showed you absolutely nothing. The only exhibit that I actually found interesting contained lots of Coke memorabilia. This contained stuff like the actual Coke dispenser that once rode on the Space Shuttle Challenger.

On the way out, they had one final exhibit. It featured kiosks supplying Coke products to sample from each continent. It was very similar to Club Cool at Epcot, only with more flavors. This was by far the best part of the whole museum! Sampling foreign sodas is always fun. Here's the Asian sodas:

 I enjoyed the bright green Melon Frosty flavored Fanta from Thailand.

Europe has some interesting Coke products including the very tasty Kinley (England) and not so tasty Beverly (Italy)...

South America/Mexico:

African soda:

This pine nut flavored soda called Bibo from South Africa was interesting. I wouldn't think that pine nuts would make a popular soda flavor, but it was tasty. I was trying to think of something similar that I could relate it to but it had a pretty unique taste.

Right before you got to the exit, they gave everyone a glass bottle of Coke with special labels from the World of Coca Cola.

After seeing the museum, I realized that I'd be very disappointed if I spent the full $16 admission for the place. Trying all of the foreign Coke products was fun, but the rest of the museum didn't do much for me. It seemed like they spent large amount of money on what potentially could be really nice exhibits, but in the end they came off as sort of anti-climactic advertisements rather than actual informative exhibits. It didn't have to be this way either. Hershey has their chocolate museum in Pennsylvania complete with 4D movies, dark rides, and free chocolate, and I enjoyed that. World of Coca-Cola was free, so it was no loss for me, but I feel bad for the people that actually spent money on this place...

Club Cool at Epcot

The words Disney and free generally don't mix, but at Epcot they do. At Club Cool in Future World, this Coca-Cola sponsored exhibit/gift ship gives free samples of Coke products from around the world.

They had soda from seven different countries on the day I visited. Some of it tasted better than any of the soda that is available here in the United States, while others I could do without.

My two favorites were the watermelon soda from China and Kinley from Israel.

Kinley tasted sort of like Sprite, only a lot more lemony and much less sweet.

I normally don't drink soda. At all. I'm perfectly happy with water, and my teeth and digestive system probably appreciate it. On my multiple trips through Club Cool during my day at Epcot to get the free beverages, I probably drank more soda than I've had in the past six months. I got my money's worth of free soda...