I decided to split this post into two separate ones because the first draft was so long. This first one will cover the first day and a half and the second post will cover the remainder of the trip.
I knew that I didn’t want to do anything too big for my 29th birthday since I’m planning a huge blowout for my 30th. Plus my birthday fell in between some big vacations this year. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep things local, head to Austin or Dallas or somewhere else that was a quick flight away. I had a Google Flight alert set for Atlanta for the weekend after my birthday as an option, but nothing was concrete. I hadn’t been in 10 years so I didn’t really know what to expect, but there was going to be a few parties that weekend I was interested in attending and Atlanta’s full of so much history.
Well I got an email mid-July stating that Frontier Airlines had $70 round-trip flights from Houston to Atlanta and after making sure my cousin could go with me I secured out flights. It didn’t take me long to book a hotel downtown after that, thanks to Priceline’s ‘Express Deals’ and before I knew it we were off to the city of peaches. We landed pretty late in the evening on Thursday so we decided to just get some dinner from Uber eats and get a head start on Friday since it would be our first full day there.
We were in the perfect location for everything we had on our loose itinerary for the weekend. I knew that I wanted to go on a specific tour I’d seen on Groupon that had great reviews, and my cousin had a few restaurants in mind in addition to the parties in town that we wanted to attend. Friday morning was an early one, we had the tour at 9AM so we headed for the meet-up location and just grabbed breakfast at Chick-Fil-A. Sidenote: If you got to CFA often, please download and use their app. You can place your order and pay for it in the app and often times skip the long lines. It’s totally worth it! Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
I try to take at least one tour every time I visit a new city, and I knew that I was in for a doozy with this one, but they’d gotten such great reviews. It was a 5 hour tour, a combination of walking and driving and we got to explore the rich Civil Rights history of the city as well as other landmarks and real estate. We drove down historic neighborhoods in the city and our tour guide, Don was a wealth of knowledge. He regaled us with stories about the city, it’s leaders and even had a long list of celebrities Atlanta’s known for. His energetic spirit and harmonica playing keep us going.
We got to have lunch at CNN and I have to say that I wasn’t that impressed. I’ve toured a few local news stations and other than the size of the CNN building I was underwhelmed. The best part was visiting the MLK Jr. museum and Ebenezer churches. I toured them the last time I was in town, but there were a few new things added so it was nice to see them. We got to sit down in the old Ebenezer church and listen to one of his speeches as well as what I think was Mahalia Jackson’s singing and it was truly moving. In fact, it was just what I needed to renew my strength and continue to fight the good fight against all of the hate that’s rearing it’s ugly face now. To see what all MLK Jr fought for and to see how far we have come let me know that we have it takes to finish the fight and truly get equality for all.
The tour left me physically tired, but spiritually awakened and ready to take on the rest of my birthday weekend as well as the rest of the year. Have any of y’all visited Atlanta? And if so, did you make your way to the MLK Jr civil rights museum? Comment below or tweet me and let me know which part of the exhibit moved you the most.