We found ourselves with a long weekend and no plans, so we booked an inexpensive hotel room and decided to spend some time in Atlanta! Like most of our plans, we did little beforehand prep. I like to look up the city we're visiting on my phone while M drives and we make plans on the go!
Our main, and really our only, solid plan was a stop at
Zoo Atlanta. Zoo Atlanta is on the smaller side but it worked perfect for us since we got there later in the day. 3 hours was plenty to see the entire zoo (at our kid's pace!) and grab a snack on the way out. Nico's favorite part was getting to ask the orangutan keeper a question about feeding time. It turns out they share a favorite food - fruit!
While driving to the zoo, we realized that the original
Chickfila Dwarf House was on the way, so we stopped for lunch! There was a 30 minute wait to sit in the diner side but the kids were plenty entertained with the dwarf door while we waited. I was happily surprised to see their classic chicken salad was on the menu (it's been discontinued most everywhere else!) and M's burger was, hands down, one of the best I've ever tried.
A stop at the
Martin Luther King Jr. birthplace is a must. We got there an hour before closing and while that was plenty of time for us to see most of everything, you could spend so much longer there really diving into the history and civil rights.
Atlanta has endless places to eat and shop at! We stopped at two of their markets - Ponce City Market and Krog Street Market while we were in town.
Ponce City Market is large and bustling and it just has a great vibe. It's a dining hall style so you can easily grab food from different stalls and eat together in the middle. We grabbed food at
Hops Chicken. The chicken biscuit + fries were so good! We wandered the shops too. It's one of my favorite things to do in a new city. The kids found dessert at a
cookie dough bar and L thought it was so fun to have a scoop of cookie dough!
Top Golf was a big hit with the kids. Pun intended! Especially for N since mini golf is his favorite thing.
Centennial Park is another must-see. It was fun to show the kids the sights since it's an olympic year. A little tip - ride
the streetcar! It's a $1 per person and you can ride the entire loop. It'll drive past the park, downtown sites, and the MLK Jr. center. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever and we won major parent points for the "splurge!".
We finished our trip with a stop at
Krog Street Market! It's another dining hall style market, but on a much smaller scale than Ponce City. It was late in the day and I wished we would have had more time to spend there but I had the best cheesesteak, M grabbed chicken fried rice and the kids had chicken + waffles. Everyone left happy and full!
Atlanta is gorgeous and artsy and full of history and delicious food. Even in the winter, we spent almost the entire trip outdoors and it was pretty perfect. Adding it to our list of favorite cities and dreaming of our next adventure!
