Atlanta vacation in March

One of the best things to do in Atlanta is to drive around through the various neighborhoods in Atlanta - Ansley Park, Virginia Highlands, Morningside, Druid Hills, Decatur, etc. There are some beautiful (and rather pricey) homes and areas of unique shops. Tour (in car or on foot) one of the area universities, like Emory or Georgia Tech (or even drive out to Athens and tour UGA).

The typical touristy destination like the World of Coca-Cola are available, and probably a good idea if you have young kids. You may also want to check out Zoo Atlanta.

Another good option is visiting one of the numerous local parks and taking a walk (you can rent rollerblades and bikes at a shop at the southwest corner of Pearson Park). The Atlanta Botanical Gardens are near Pearson Park, but are closed to the public on Mondays, so plan accordingly.

Quick Tips:

Get some input from an Atlanta native about what to see. If you don't know anyone from Atlanta, check out what some of the natives have to say on these boards. Also, try to eat out at least one night at a non-chain restaurant. Atlanta is full of wonderful eateries, from fast-food to fine cuisine.

If you're new to town and are driving, get a good map of the area. There are a LOT of streets named Peachtree - Peachtree St., W. Peachtree St., Peachtree Center Blvd, etc. and it can be a little confusing. Also, as with many downtowns, a lot of the roads run one-way, and you'll need to know how to get around the block if you miss a turn.

Best Way To Get Around:

A car is essential for getting around Atlanta, though traffic can be a real pain, especially if you need to get out of the city around 5:30. MARTA is great for getting to/from the airport, but overall the public transportation system is rather weak for such a large city. Also, if you do have to get around in rush hour and are travelling with someone else, head for the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane immediately. The HOV lane has its own exit lanes for major interstate splits, which is very beneficial.

The Grille is a typical college hangout - students grabbing a burger and fries while studying or just discussing the latest with their friends. The burgers are far from low fat, but are made at the restaurant and grilled to perfection. I had the mushroom swiss burger with sauteed onions, and it was wonderful. Plenty of mushrooms and onions over a slice of swiss and two grilled beef patties. Yum. They have hand cut steak fries which are delicious, and also mouth-watering roasted garlic mashed potatoes and gravy. Their grilled chicken sandwich is a good option if you want to cut the fat, and they have limited number of vegetarian options. Overall, it's an excellent meal for less than $8 a head, including a drink.

Cafe Tu Tu Tango is a tapas bar. The restaurant walls are covered in original art, all of which is for sale. There are artist stations near the door and upstairs where you can watch artists paint while you wait for a table or wait for your food. The restaurant also gives free tarot readings if you are into that, and there are "spontaneous entertainment" performances when space permits - such as a tango performance, african drummers, a belly dancer or even occassionally a fire eater.

We came on a Monday night and waited about 10 minutes for a table. The best way to kill time while you wait is to sit at the bar with some sangria. Also, if you are waiting at the bar, ask to see a menu - you can begin deciding what you want to order, which is no small task.

It's best to go with a group of people - you'll get to try a bigger variety of things. There were 4 of us, and we ordered 6 items (two at a time) and split two desserts and we were sufficiently full. It's definitely best to order your food in stages - otherwise you end up with more plates of food than will fit on the table. Once seated, they start you with very delicious homemade hummus. Normally I can't stand hummus because it has a grainy, bland texture, but this stuff was wonderful. If only all hummus was like this!

We had with the Baked Artichoke and Crabmeat Dip, Sauteed Mushrooms in a garlic and sherry sauce, Beef Napolean (cooked spinach and mushrooms layered with steak and a crunchy tortilla-like circle), Cuban Steak Skewers, the Tango white pizza (traditional thin crust pizza topped with cheese and carmelized onions) and the barbequed veal with tomato corn salsa. Everything was delicious. I must say that the mushrooms were probably my favorite, but it's a hard call to make.

Ah, finally comes dessert. They have excellent and unique desserts - Almond flan, cookies and cream (but with oatmeal cookies), Key Lime Pie (hey, we're in the south!), triple layer chocolate fudge cake, guava cheesecake and "crazy bananas". We ended up splitting a guava cheesecake and a crazy bananas. The guava cheesecake was rich and creamy, drizzled with strawberry sauce. I didn't try the crazy bananas, but it is one of their signature desserts - banana walnut ice cream with bananas and carmel sauce.

Crescent Moon has the best breakfast in Decatur. I won't go so far as to say it's the best breakfast in all of Atlanta, because there is much to be said about the Flying Biscuit as well, but let's say it's a close race between these two.

We went to the Crescent Moon for Sunday brunch, and were seated fairly quickly -in about 15-20 minutes. Sunday brunch is one of the restaurant's busiest times. They do have a nice "waiting room" in the back with coffee and a limited number of seats. If it weren't for the back room, you'd be waiting outside. The tables pack together fairly closely. Service is fast and friendly.

"The Heap" is a standard favorite here - seasoned hash brown potatoes topped with bacon, cheese and two eggs (any style). The "Vegetable Heap" subtracts the bacon and adds sauteed vegetables. I got Belgian Waffle Cakes - Belgian Waffle batter cooked on a griddle like pancakes. The full stack is 4 LARGE pancakes - I couldn't finish it all. A short stack is also available and a better option for people without a huge appetite. I tend to be able to eat a full stack of pancakes, but these filled me up fast. My husband got "The Usual" - two eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes, grits or biscuit. He finished it all, but was full by the end.

For a copy of the menu, including prices, click here

The Varsity Drive-In has been an Atlanta staple for 75 years. Established in 1928, the Varsity is the world's largest drive-in. On days of Georgia Tech football games, up to 30,000 people can be known to visit the restaurant in one day, so plan accordingly! It sells more than two miles of hot dogs, a ton of onion rings and 300 gallons of chili daily. If you go at peak lunch hour, be ready for a brisk "what'll ya have" as soon as the person in front of you steps out of the way. The counter staff don't have time for people who take 5 minutes to decide what they want, so think about it while you wait and be ready to order when you hit the counter. If you like time to decide, go at an off-peak time (like mid-afternoon) and you'll have far more patient staff.

The varsity is far from low fat - a double cheeseburger with onion rings and the requisite Coca-Cola (we are in Atlanta, so no Pepsi here!) is not for those on a strict diet. But for the unique experience and fresh from the fryer onion rings it's worth getting your entire daily fat allotment from one meal! The chili burger and chili dog with fresh cut fries is another classic meal, available as a combo with a soft drink. However, I'd consider a Frosted Orange instead of a soft drink for a few cents more. Frosted Orange is a signature Varsity staple - kind of a like an Orange Julius, but better.

If you have young kids, ask for a paper varisty cook's hat (like they used to give out at McDonalds years ago) for your kids to wear while they eat.

Visit The Varsity online.

A trip out to the UGA campus is a great short road trip for an afternoon. About an hour outside of Atlanta to the northeast, Athens is a wonderful college town.

The university of Georgia owns a majority of Clark county - almost 4,500 acres, and another 40,000 acres throughout the rest of the state. North campus is the historic old campus - severak of the buildings were built in the early 19th century, including the University Chapel and Phi Kappa Hall. South campus is the modern campus, which according to our friends who went there means it is the ugly part of campus. (For the record, I didn't think the south campus was as bad as they said it was, though North campus is definitely prettier). South campus houses much of the science related buildings, as well as the graduate studies center, the Coliseum and Heritage Hall.

North campus is adjacent to downtown Athens with its plethora of shops and restaurants (though most shut down at 5:00 pm or earlier on Sunday, so plan accordingly). To get to downtown Athens, you can walk under "The Arch" which is a famous landmark on campus. Legend has it that if you walk under the arch as a freshman, you won't graduate (or worse).

Downtown Athens is full of great shops selling everything from music to clothes to stationery to books. Take an hour (or more) in the afternoon and wander through the streets and visit the various shops. For dinner, there is a myriad of choices from a brewpubs to a bistro to the Mellow Mushroom pizza. You can visit the Gator Hater bar (but I'd steer clear if you're a Florida fan) or numerous other bars or pubs in the evening.

Admission is $5.00.

The Carter Presidential Center houses the Jimmy Carter Museum and Library. To truly enjoy the museum, you probably have to be somewhat interested in American and Presidential history. If you're not, I'd skip the Carter Center. Personally, I'm a pretty big history buff, and I really enjoyed the museum. The museum has a recreation of the Oval Office as it looked during Jimmy Carter's presidency, and exhibits and memorabilia from his days in office and his major policies and issues, from human rights concerns to establishing a formal relationship with mainland China to skyrocketing gas prices to the Iran hostage crisis. There are also pictures and a history of his childhood and political life before the presidency.

The library is separate, and we did not go to it, but the museum does have a window into the library and talks about the resources that are available in the Library.

Overall, the Carter Center was very enjoyable, but if you don't enjoy history you will probably be slightly bored and think that it is not worth the $5.00 admission price.

For more information on the Carter Center and mission and efforts of the Carter Center Organization, visit the Carter Center website.

The Fernbank museum is only about 1/4 mile from our friend's townhouse, so this was something close and fun to do while they were at work one day. The IMAX theater is a newer style - just a big screen in front of you, not the whole overhead dome like in the older IMAXs. The feeling is the same, but personally I prefer the domes. We saw an interesting but not spectacular show on "The Lost World" - mountains in Southern Venezuela. I enjoyed the show particularly because they didn't mount a camera on the bottom of a plane or helicopter and go zig-zagging all over the place. Most IMAX shows tend to make me motion sick if I don't close my eyes at least a few times.

Aside from the IMAX, the most interesting exhibit for both adults and kids alike is the hands-on "Spectrum of the Senses" exhibit on the top floor. You can play with bubbles, see how optical illusions happen, play with sound and light, and just generally have fun. Unfortunately we got to this exhibit last and didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked, because we were starving and needed to get to lunch.

We also really enjoyed the exhibit on Syria, which was on the lower level. I think this is where traveling or temporary exhibits are, so I don't think the Syrian exhibit will be there permanently, but it was very interesting. They had copies of Euclidian geometry books transferred into Arabic, and things like wills, annual reports and other documents written in cuneiform. Somehow I forget that cuneiform and heiroglyphics are actually writing, and they had things like wills and business documents written in these funny-looking characters.

The exhibit on the timeline of Georgia is rather interesting, but there are a bit too many stuffed animals and not enough other information. Personally, I'm a photography buff and one of my favorite parts of the whole museum was the black and white photographs that were around the atrium on the main level and upper levels.

The World of Coca-Cola is the quintessential "Tourist" thing to do in Atlanta. For the price of $6 per adult, you can view the "history" of Coca-Cola. You get a thorough overview of how Coca-Cola was made and distributed and how consuption has grown. Lots of Coca-Cola memorabilia - the old signs advertising Coke for 5 cents, bottling machines from the 1940s, etc. There's a brief blurb about "new Coke" (remember that?) with a positive spin about how consumers "remained loyal" to Coca-Cola Classic. (In other words, new Coke was a flop.) Overall, I didn't feel the museum was worth the $6 admission price.

However, every kid will want to visit this place, because for your $6 admission (less for kids, but I don't know the exact price) you can drink unlimited Coke products from the US and around the world. No searching for a drinking fountain here! The "Fountain" of coke where you can sample all the U.S. Coca-Cola products (from Coca-Cola to Nestea) is interesting, and it was fun to try the strange flavors of Fanta and other drinks from around the world (some are just gross beyond description - like the lychee nut flavor from Thailand). I'd pay $2 to try all the different flavors, but $6 for everything was a bit much.

For pictures, visit the World of Coca-Cola