Lodging

Hotels in Atlanta are for chumps (and people with deep pockets). We went to Atlanta over a Fourth of July weekend, and the hotel rates were very high (a room at a Day’s Inn in downtown cost something like $150 a night). We opted instead for a vacation rental that we found via Vacation Rentals by Owner, and it was an amazing bargain. It was a private home in the upscale neighborhood of Buckhead, located in uptown Atlanta. The owners, who were super-nice and extremely helpful, actually upgraded us from the studio we originally booked for no extra charge. We ended up in a spacious, newly constructed one-bedroom apartment with hardwood flooring, marble bathroom, and granite countertops, all for less than $100 a night. Yes, not being downtown had something to do with the lower rates, but 1) we didn’t even need to go downtown for two of our three days in Atlanta, and 2) we also saw a bunch of nice-looking condos located smack in the middle of downtown — a short walk away from the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola — that are less expensive and more spacious than hotels in that area, costing a little more than $100 a night. If you want to net one of those condos, though, it looks like you’ll have to book early. We started looking about three months before our trip, and every one of those condos were already taken. Also, it seems that most of those condos exist solely for the purpose of being rented out as vacation stays, as many of the ones we inquired about were managed by the same two or three people.

Attractions

Georgia Aquarium

This was probably our favorite attraction in Atlanta, mainly because of its humongous shark tank with three whale sharks, giant manta rays, chubby groupers, and large schools of tuna. The beluga whales are also a must-see. It took us about three hours or so to tour the whole aquarium, and that’s with me spending more time at several of the exhibits snapping tons of photos.

It definitely pays to purchase aquarium tickets online in advance (you’ll need to know what date and time you plan to visit when you order tickets). When we arrived, there was a long, meandering line in front of the ticket windows, but because we had bought our tickets in advance, we were able to basically walk straight past that horde and into the aquarium. There’s still a bit of a wait inside where they scan your ticket, but you’ll save probably half an hour by buying online.

Getting tickets in advance saves you from waiting outside the aquarium, but nothing can save you from waiting inside the aquarium. Every exhibit had several layers of people waiting to get their turn to peek in, and there were tons of kids running around. And this was midday on a Thursday. Judging from the reviews of other travelers, the crowd we encountered was relatively small for the aquarium. Some travelers have recommended planning your visit in the morning to avoid a huge throng of people.

World of Coca-Cola

I have mixed feelings about this place. On one hand, it’s pretty cool to get to taste every Coke product from around the world. On the other hand, the place is just one gigantic commercial for Coca-Cola. I pretty much expected that, from having gone to the old World of Coca-Cola, but the corporate propaganda turned out to be even worse than I imagined. The staff member greeting us was a woman with an impossibly cheery personality who told us which pieces of memorabilia in the waiting room we should ooh and aah about. I bet secretly everyone who works there hates Coke. How can you not after spending your whole day pretending to be super happy and excited about a soft drink?

Once you get past the happy happy joy joy staff, you get treated to an animated “documentary” — with the vomit-inducing title “Inside the Happiness Factory” — about how Coca-Cola is made (by weird little aliens and their weird alien kissing dog things, apparently). Later, you get to see another short movie — this time wearing 3D glasses and seated on a motion simulator while you get water splashed on you — about a mad scientist and his assistant’s quest to discover what makes a Coke great (hmm … how does it feel to know your acting career died before it barely got started?). The corporate propaganda really gets on your nerves after a while.

I wish they would offer tickets for admission just to the tasting room, because that’s all we really went for (and probably what most everyone else go for, too). That really is the one saving grace for this place. I was disappointed that they no longer have the soda fountains that shoot an arching stream of soda into your cup, replacing them with standard soda fountains instead. However, getting to sample sodas from five continents makes it a worthwhile experience. My only gripe is that they don’t sell the sodas from the tasting room in their gift shop, so now I pretty much have to go to Djibouti in order to get my Sunfill mint soda.

Note: If you plan to visit both the aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola, you should definitely look into buying the Pemberton Place combo pass, which is available on the Web site for either attraction and saves you money. Whichever site you buy it from, you’ll need to specify a time and date for admittance to that attraction. For instance, if you buy the pass from the aquarium site, you’ll be admitted to the aquarium at the specified time, and you’ll get general admission at any time to the World of Coca-Cola.

Zoo Atlanta

Given our fondness for zoos, this was a must-see for us. The zoo isn’t big, but it has some well-designed exhibits that keeps the animals comfortable while giving visitors a nice view. We were impressed by the size of the zoo’s great apes exhibits and how many gorillas and orangutans it has. And of course, it never hurts to have adorable giant and red pandas. We also got a 50 percent discount because we are members of the North Carolina Zoo Society, which offers reduced admissions to partner zoos. You can read more about our visit here.

Atlanta History Center

This was a late addition to our itinerary, and we were pleasantly surprised when we found out upon arrival that because we were Bank of America customers, we got in for free. The center, situated in a particularly ritzy Buckhead neighborhood that’s filled with gorgeous and expensive homes, has three main components: a museum building that houses several exhibits about various aspects of Atlanta history, the Swan House, and the Tullie Smith Farm House.

The most interesting part of the center for me was the exhibit about the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It was well-designed exhibit and features hands-on activities and some interesting items, such as a replica of the torch and medal from every modern Olympic Games. The museum also has a Civil War collection that’s pretty similar to other Civil War exhibits I’ve seen (uniforms, weapons, knicknacks). There’s also an exhibit about Native American influence on Georgian culture, which includes a pottery collection and video that we, being amateur potters, found very interesting.

As for the preserved old houses, they are kind of interesting, but are more or less just like any other preserved old house. The farm house has a pretty garden outside. The artifacts in the house are not original to the house, though they are representative of objects from that era. The Swan House is an impressive manor with a gorgeous library and dining room. Again, it bears a striking resemblance to other mansions from the 1920s that we’ve visited, including the no-photography-inside policy. The front of the mansion has a nice cascading fountain that runs to the lawn several tiers below, and the house is situated amid some lush woods.

Transportation

As I mentioned above, we stayed in Buckhead rather than downtown Atlanta, but we had no problems getting to and from downtown. We were just a couple minutes away from a MARTA station, where we were able to park for free. There were trains to downtown every 10 minutes or so, and the ride from Buckhead only took about 10 minutes. For the aquarium and World of Coca-Cola, we took the MARTA to the Peachtree Center stop and had a 10-minute walk. From our brief experience riding the MARTA, the train system seemed to be pretty good, and it saved us from having to drive through the snarled interstate traffic we saw from our train window.

Driving around Atlanta (we drove mostly around Buckhead and to the zoo) wasn’t too bad. When we were approaching and leaving Atlanta, traffic on the interstate was busy, but by no means ridiculous. We never got stuck in a parking-lot-like jam, and the carpool lane allowed for smoother driving. There wasn’t a huge amount of traffic on the local roads (partly because we took pains to avoid driving during rush hour). The one gripe we had was the ridiculous number of streets with Peachtree in the name. It seemed like every other traffic light we came across was an intersection with Peachtree something.

Dining

Since we stayed in Buckhead, most of the recommendations below are in that area. For more information about each one and a couple other places we ate at, see our food blog.

• Eclipse di Luna: Terrific place to go for tapas. If it’s not too hot outside, get a seat on the covered patio, enjoy the live Latin music, and gorge yourself on amazing small plates of food, including melt-in-your-mouth pork bellies, roasted peppers stuffed with goat cheese, and gamy lamb ribs.
• Taka Sushi Cafe: We saw so many sushi joints around Buckhead that you could probably do a sushi crawl there. This little hole-in-the-wall place was the one recommended by our hosts, and it did not disappoint. The uni (sea urchin) was fatty, fishy, and melty, all in a good way. Taka also offered one thing I didn’t expect to find in a sushi joint — a tiny plate of potato salad as a starter.
• Anis: A cute little French bistro nestled in a residential neighborhood. We went for lunch and had some delicious steak frites and wild mushroom ravioli.
• Cafe Intermzzo: This place was a bit hard to find because our GPS and Google Maps led us astray, but it was well worth the effort. The classic European-style cafe had a nice atmosphere, a cute patio, and heavenly pastries. Great place to go for after-dinner dessert and drinks.
• Meehan’s Public House: This downtown establishment was the one non-Buckhead restaurant we dined in, and its food was better than you would expect from an Irish pub in a touristy area. The lobster ravioli that drew us in was terrific, and the beef rib was melt-in-your-mouth tender.