Last summer a friend wanted to take a trip for his birthday so off to Atlanta we went! This was my first visit to Atlanta outside of the airport, and I really did not know what to expect. I honestly had no clue how amazed I would be to this fun city!

Good news is you definitely don’t need a car to explore Atlanta. The MARTA subway and buses are great and will get you everywhere you want to go. We did use Uber a couple of times because of time constraints, and it was really warm! There is a MARTA station right in the airport near the Southwest Airlines ticket counter.

With that said let’s dig right in. As usual, I found myself standing on the jet bridge with the phone in hand booking a hotel. I chose the Hilton Atlanta. It is right downtown and you can walk to many of the sights very easily. The room and the service provided by the staff was wonderful! On a side note, this is the third Hilton I have stayed in over the last year and I really like Hilton!

Right in the center of downtown is Olympic Park. The park and the surrounding area is where you will find many of the most popular attractions. We purchased the Atlanta CityPASS for $75 which gave us access to World of Coca-Cola, Georgia Aquarium, Zoo Atlanta, CNN Studio Tour!

The Georgia Aquarium has to be the best aquarium I have visited, hands down! They have whale sharks! As my friend Patricia likes to say, “Do you hear me!?”. Whale sharks! This is the only aquarium outside of Asia where you can see these amazing creatures. The highlight of Zoo Atlanta was the Pandas! They are so cute! The CNN Studio Tour was very informative, but honestly not the most exciting tour I have taken. The World of Coca-Cola was a lot of fun and you get to leave with your own glass bottle of Coke that was bottled right there!

Atlanta is also home to the Martin Luther King Jr National Monument. Here you will find a visitor center, his church, his birth home, and his burial place. My visit here was a sobering reminder of how far we have come and how far we still have to go. Sitting in one of the pews of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and listening to the words of Dr. King play is a humbling experience.

I happened to notice in one of the tourist publications I had picked up an ad for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I am a big fan of gardens, as is the friend I was traveling with, so we decided to venture in that direction. I was delighted to see that they were currently hosting a display of Chihuly’s spectacular glass sculptures. The gardens here are breathtaking! If you visit Atlanta the gardens are a MUST!

The Hilton is connected to two other hotels downtown via sky-bridges. They are the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Both hotels were designed by architect John C. Portman, Jr. and are spectacular! Standing on the top floor of the Marriott and looking down is dizzying! The curves, angles, colors, and lighting are outstanding!

There are other sights in Atlanta that are on my radar like the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and the Delta Museum of Flight, so I’ll definitely be back! If you haven’t been to Atlanta I highly recommend going for a few nights and enjoying all this city has to offer.