4th April 2026

Hello from Atlanta!  With a population of six million people, this was the biggest city I’d be visiting on my Deep South adventure, ninth largest in the USA, and significantly more sizeable than the other big cities I was including this time around.  Nashville, New Orleans and Memphis all have populations between one and two million, so I was excited to get to know another significant US metropolis.  Not only this, as well as the sights, Atlanta would also be the place I’d be catching up with some really good friends and spending the Easter weekend – I had a wonderful time.

After leaving the Great Smoky Mountains and driving through “Deliverance” country of north-east Georgia, I hit the freeway system and traffic of the Deep South’s Big Smoke.  I definitely found it to be one of the nicest and friendliest of America’s big cities, although some of the drivers there were clearly big city ones, and there was a fair bit of undertaking, cutting off and beeping going on as I was passing navigating its freeway system during the evening rush hour.

I was heading to the area of Brookwood, just north of the Midtown area, and parked up outside the house of my good friend Doug, who I first met when we were both travelling in Malawi way back in 2011.  We had become friends after holing ourselves up in the hotel we were staying at while the city of Lilongwe and the rest of the country were experiencing deadly riots, unfortunately at the time of our arrival there!  We had since met up in his home city of Washington DC, and then again in London, and it was so good to see him again, nice and settled down in a lovely house with his wife and little boy there in Atlanta.  On our first evening, we did some catching up over a delicious meal at a nearby Tex-Mex restaurant, enjoying margaritas and tacos, before some good strong North Carolina craft beer back at his place.  I went to bed a merry soul that evening!

And what an amazing full day in the city!  I was picked up in the morning by my good friends and fellow global travellers Merry Jo and Dave, who had travelled up from Florida for the weekend.  We had last met up in Madeira nearly two years ago now, so it was really great to see them again, and I was really pleased and grateful to them for having driven up from Florida to make this possible.  They hadn’t changed one bit, and since we last met had been to all sorts of new places including Namibia, China and Turkmenistan – awesome travellers indeed!

We had planned to do the sights of Atlanta for the day, and were booked in to visit the World of Coca-Cola in the morning, and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in the afternoon.

First up, a visit to the place dedicated to one of my three favourite drinks – along with milk and brandy, that is Coca-Cola!  This most famous of beverages was first made in Atlanta way back in 1886, starting life out as a soda fountain drink in a pharmacy shop to cure headaches and calm the nerves – it certainly helps with both those things for me nowadays, and then some!  Its key ingredient famously remains a secret, and I’ve always had a suspicion it is related to the coca plant of South America, as why else would it be called that…?  But of course that would make it illegal, and surely America wouldn’t allow that, unless of course this is why they aim to keep its key ingredient a secret.

Anyway, the World of Coca-Cola was great fun, and as well as fascinating exhibits on the drink and its history, it also involved lots of sugary drinks tasting from around the world, including cucumber flavour Sprite from Romania, apple lychee flavour Minute Maid from South Korea, and my own personal favourite, Inca Kola from Peru – it had been a while since I last had that sugary delight!  It also involved the chance to create your own soda drink, varying the fruit, spice and sugar levels, and a meeting with the Coca-Cola bear himself.  Merry Jo particularly enjoyed that one, as did I!

Needing a bit of food substance to combat the effects of a potential sugar rush, we headed for lunch at a fantastic American diner chain nearby called Johnny Rockets.  The place had a very American 1950s vibe to it which felt like straight out of Back to the Future, and I was half-expecting a big burly guy to come in and say “Hey McFly!”  Merry Jo had a chicken salad, Dave a “dawg”, or rather a hot dog, and I had one of my personal American favourites, a Philly Cheese Steak – delish!  It was all washed down with a takeaway Inca Kola I’d picked up back in the World of Coca-Cola.  And at last, after explanations from both the Binkleys and also Doug and Ali the evening before, I understood how to do the tipping thing in the USA when one is presented with the bill – it is a complex process which only now upon my ninth visit to the States, I actually got to grips with.  It involves first paying for the bill with a credit or debit card, and then, only then, when presented with the receipt, you add the tip followed by your signature next to it.  Simples!

For our second visit for the day, we had an absolutely incredible afternoon, blessed I feel.  When I had planned this trip months ago, I hadn’t actually figured that this day in Atlanta and our visit to Martin Luther King’s home there would coincide with the anniversary of his tragic passing, April 4^th 1968.  I only realised this on the morning of our visit, that we would be there 58 years after he entered the Promised Land, to the day.

Expecting it to be heaving on this very significant day for America and the Civil Rights Movement, the place was very calm and had a good atmosphere.  The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park covers a large 35-acre chunk of the east side of Atlanta, and along with being just a regular neighbourhood of town where people live and work, is also home to MLK’s birthplace, where he spent his early childhood up to 12 years of age, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was baptized and later spent the last 8 years of his life being a pastor.  Along with his birth home and church, he is also buried there alongside his wife Coretta, in the middle of a beautiful reflecting pool on the site of the King Centre for Nonviolent Social Change.

After we had parked up, we headed to where there was a small gathering at his resting place, and in fact had stumbled upon a memorial service there attended by his family members, including his youngest daughter Bernice King.  I saw with my own eyes the very emotional message written on his tomb which often makes me cry, “Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, I am Free at Last”.

When the small gathering and photographers had dispersed, we took in the informative exhibits within the King Centre itself before heading up to his birth home at 501 Auburn Avenue NE.  We then stumbled upon the continuation of the memorial service being held inside Ebenezer Baptist Church itself, where the family and small gathering had gone to after the initial meeting around the pool, and were invited in.  We had arrived just in time for the beginning, and joined only around 50 or so other people for some wonderful and lively Gospel music and a series of excellent and very vibrant preachers, including the current leader of the Alpha Fraternity Society of which MLK was a part of, and also his nephew, the Reverend Doctor Derek Barber King, who preached really powerfully and to my mind sounded just like his uncle.

I teach about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movements in some of my lessons, and it had been such an incredible experience to be there at this time.  It was very special to be able to visit and be in the presence of this intimate group of people so directly connected to the man himself on this really very poignant day, it felt meant-to-be.  I now feel enabled to teach my lessons on him with greater understanding and reverence for one of the main heroes and inspirations in my life.  Thank you Lord.

It had been a wonderful day spent in lovely Atlanta, with my wonderful travelling friends Merry Jo and Dave.  They dropped me off back at Doug’s, and drove back to their home again in Florida the next day.  We’re planning to meet up again twice next year, once in England, and once again in Florida.

Doug and his family had also just returned from an afternoon walk on Atlanta’s newly-refurbished and gentrified “Beltline”, a re-purposed 22-mile trail around the city centre built on what were originally railroad tracks, but which is now home to paths, parks, cafes and culture.  I would have liked to have joined them on this, but unfortunately could not fit everything in on this day.

We did spend a lovely final evening in together for my time in Atlanta, with a Thai takeaway and some more strong and powerful North Carolina craft beer.

I had had a fantastic and very memorable weekend in Atlanta, certainly having some good times with some good friends.  It was great to re-connect again.  The next day I was heading into the true Deep South of the country, through Alabama and thence Mississippi.  I had a feeling I would continue to deepen my understanding of and experiences with the US Civil Rights Movement, and I wasn’t far wrong.  I was also heading off to meet with more people, and the first part of my two-week Deep South adventure was certainly a very sociable one.  More on that in my next.