I’ve just got back from a business trip to Atlanta and I thought that I would note down some of my thoughts.

Firstly, for a city of 0.4 million people there isn’t much for a tourist to do. According to Wikipedia it’s also the seventh most visited city in the US. Really!?

Now that’s not to say there aren’t things to do there, but there wasn’t a lot I wanted to do. I’ve been to aquariums, and to be honest I wasn’t interested in going around the Coca-cola museum even with the prospect of a ‘free’ bottle of coke that was created whilst I was there. There are other museums, but I wasn’t interested in them either.

So what did I see?

Firstly the ride out from the Airport to town was interesting. It appeared that the only other white people on the train system were tourists. Certainly it’s in stark contrast to Boston, but it’s also possible that I only say Atlanta outside of normal commuting hours. Who knows?

Also, there was a lot of pseudo-derelict light industrial zoning. This is the case the world over, and certainly you see it in London too, but the extent of it was a little surprising. Now and then you’d go past nicer areas with immaculate paint, and then cross some rail road tracks and you’d be back to graffiti scarred buildings with rusting vehicles outside of it.

Atlanta from the MARTA. Light industrial for large swathes of the route out of the airport.

Atlanta from the MARTA. Light industrial for large swathes of the route out of the airport.

You can’t really judge a city from it’s suburbs next to a train track though and there are certainly other areas which look a lot nicer.

Tower blocks near the Lenox Mall.

Sunrise from my hotel room.

However that was all I was able to see when I was at my conference, but thankfully my colleague and I had best part of a day to experience the city.

If you’re in Atlanta you really have to go to the Martin Luther King district. I found this deeply moving. You forget how recent this was, within the life span of my parents and less than 10 years before my birth. Although we don’t see such obvious segregation I’m sure it still exists. Again, an observation, that all the staff that served us food etc were black. These are low paid jobs and it appears that they were almost entirely taken by one group of people. In the UK you’ll often see kids from all backgrounds (well, most backgrounds) making a bit of spending money but I didn’t see that. I don’t know, maybe it’s Empire Guilt but I was deeply uncomfortable with the subservience on show, although in truth probably not that different from other places I’ve been to in the US.

Anyway. Martin Luther King, Jr. I knew about the non-violent protest stance but to see news reel footage of it was incredible. What the protesters put up with is staggering. What they had been putting up with is also staggering. For example, a young black guy was lynched because he ‘got fresh’ with a white girl. Leaving a diner he had said ‘See ya, baby’ (or similar). That was enough for the local people to kill him. I’ve tried to imagine being beaten, insulted and being the focus of such bile and every time I do I cannot wrap my head around those protesters sitting there and taking it. Every single one of them is pretty heroic. It was also interesting to see something where there was a deeply positive outcome due in no small part to religion. Religion gave them a rock to hold on to, and provided a basis for the Freedom songs they sang.

I would say that if you’re in Atlanta you have to go to the exhibition to re-acquaint yourself with the stories and to behold the bravery of the black population.

It’s funny, in the visitor centre the only graffiti I say said “RIP MLK” and not the usual sort of gutter talk.

The MLK area looked somewhat deprived though. We saw this sign walking back to town a few blocks from the exhibition, it says “Drug-free school zone”.

We then proceeded to walk around the city. Obviously we didn’t have a plan (although I’d picked up a couple of tourist attraction things from the hotel) so we wandered into an area we figured would be good for lunch, maybe a little sightseeing and people watching. We did encounter a problem though. Finding somewhere to eat. Actually that’s not strictly true, we struggled to find anywhere to eat where the food and drink wouldn’t be in a polystyrene container. Eventually having wandered down plenty of side streets we found a cool little pizza place called Slice Downtown. It was quirky with cool music and the staff were really friendly. And their (pizza) pie was good.

Some Atlanta Pie. It's ok, Paul and I shared this huge monster.

We then wandered down to the Centennial park from when Atlanta hosted the Olympics. Which was nice.

Centennial Park and the Olympic ring fountain.

And then we found ourselves at a loose end and the time just after 2 in the afternoon. Yes, there were museums, but nothing else we could easily do on foot, so we went back to the hotel (via the Arts District which wasn’t nearly as cool, or as funky as we thought it would be).

A special word must go to the Airport. It was so confusing and badly sign posted as to be untrue. When you first land you’re not told where to go and left to your own devices with inadequate signage on what to do. I landed in terminal F, and the exit was the faaaar end but nothing really tells you this. Each terminal is 1000 feet from the previous one. It is a LARGE airport!

F — E — D — C — B — A — T — EXIT

Leaving is pretty similar too. You’re told how to get to the other terminals, but not, for example what facilities exist at them. So do you panic buy things in the shops just past security or what? For future reference each terminal does indeed have it’s own shops, and they’re significantly better than the ones just past security.

Oh and one last thing. You have to go through security again when you land. So, you have to recheck your bags and place any containers of liquid in your hold baggage and GAH WHY?!?!

So, Atlanta. Nice enough but not sure why one would go there as a tourist.