The 1996 Olympic Games exhibit at the Atlanta History Center.

We kicked off our final full day in Atlanta with a visit to the Atlanta History Center, which was only a few minutes away from where we are staying. The center has several parts — a history museum, an old farm house from the 1800s, and a stately mansion built in the 1920s — all surrounded by lush gardens and woods.

The history museum housed several exhibition halls focusing on, among other things, the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the Civil War, and Native American influence on Georgian culture. The most interesting one was the Olympics collection, which spanned two floors. The first floor featured exhibits on topics such as the construction of Atlanta’s Olympic facilities, replicas of torches and medals from every Olympic Games, and a day-by-day look at the 1996 Games. The second floor featured a variety of hands-on activities, such as exercise bikes and rowing machines on which you can try to match Olympian performances. We also found the pottery exhibit in the Native American collection quite interesting, especially a video that demonstrated how a couple of good ol’ boys are carrying on a unique tradition of pottery-making that involves using mules to turn a wheel to mix the clay and making glaze with a glaze mill.

The two preserved houses were also pretty interesting, though old preserved houses kind of all run together once you’ve seen a few of them. The farm house was relatively simple, and its furnishings bore a strong resemblance to furnitures we’ve seen in other old houses from that era, such as rope beds. The Swan House mansion was beautiful (unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the house), and again, some of it architectural styles and interior furnishing reminded me of other mansions that we’ve visited.

The Swan House fountain at the Atlanta History Center.

In between and after our history lesson, we treated ourselves to fine patio dining all around the neighborhood of Buckhead. It started with lunch at Anis, a French bistro where we had wild mushroom ravioli and steak frites. The ravioli were delicious but a little on the skimpy side (only four), and the steak frites were excellent. The patio theme continued at dinner when we hit up Eclipse di Luna for some tapas action. We ordered seven items and loved almost every one of them, in particular the goat cheese-stuffed peppers and braised pork bellies.

The patio area at Anis, where we had lunch.

Finally, we concluded the night at Cafe Intermezzo, which is a whole story unto itself. We had actually gone searching for Cafe Intermezzo the previous night after finding it on Yelp. We were in the mood for some sweets and this place had good reviews and some appealing choices on its menu. Yet, even with the help of Google Maps and GPS, we couldn’t find it. The place where it was supposed to be, according to Google Maps, was a strip mall and the cafe was nowhere in sight. We circled those couple blocks but found nothing. We weren’t about to give up, however, and we went back to the area again today after our visit to the history center. Yet again our search was in vain. Finally, we asked our hosts about the place, and with the directions they provided, we finally located Cafe Intermezzo after dinner tonight — several blocks down from where it was located on Google Maps.

Finding the place, however, was just the first part of the adventure. We circled the place twice in search of parking. It wasn’t that we were too cheap to pay for parking, but rather that we didn’t have cash with us to pay the $3 parking fee for the lots around the cafe, which did not accept credit cards. Eventually, we backtracked a mile to find an ATM and got cash to pay for parking. After all this trouble, we were thinking that this place had better be worth the trouble.

Fortunately, Cafe Intermezzo did not disappoint. We were seated — where else? — on a large patio that was dimly illuminated by candlelight, with cool breeze being provided by the surprisingly mild night and the numerous fans humming away on the ceiling. The drink menu was impressively thick, and the cafe also had quite a selection of pastries. Customers were invited to go inspect the sweet offerings in the display cases and make their choices. We went with a slice of cookie dough cheesecake and a crepe Suzette. Both were delectable, though the combination of the warm sweetness of the crepe and the cool sweetness of the cheesecake proved overwhelming. We needed a pot of green tea to help us offset the sugar overload and finish the desserts. We left the cafe with our sweet tooth thoroughly satisfied and our bellies bloated with cheesecake, crepe, alcohol, and tea. After this, I don’t think I’ll be craving sweets for at least two weeks.