Atlanta

Atlanta is an inland city on the Piedmont plateau, and the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are each a drive of four to five hours, too far for a day at the beach. Locals swim instead at the reservoirs north of the city. Lake Lanier, about an hour away, has sandy swimming areas and warm water through summer, often around 29°C. Lake Allatoona has a similar setup. These are pleasant enough on a hot weekend, but they are lake days for local families, not beach life. Otherwise, swimming means a hotel pool.

Atlanta is one of the best places to eat Southern food in its own setting. Expect fried chicken, collards, mac and cheese, shrimp and grits, peach cobbler and smoked barbecue, served in meat-and-three cafeterias, soul food kitchens on the west side and long-running diners. Sunday brunch is taken seriously, and sweet tea comes with almost everything.

The other great strength lies northeast of the centre along Buford Highway. This long run of strip malls is packed with Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Mexican and Ethiopian restaurants that cook for their own communities. In town, converted warehouse food halls along the BeltLine, chef-led restaurants in Inman Park and the Westside, and a solid craft brewery scene fill out the range. You will need a car or a ride for much of it.

Most of the city was burned in 1864, and much of what followed was rebuilt in glass and concrete, so Atlanta has little old townscape to wander. Its heritage is more recent and carries real weight. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park on Auburn Avenue includes his birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church. Together with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights downtown, it makes the city a key place for understanding the civil rights movement.

Beyond that, the High Museum of Art in Midtown is the region's leading art museum. The Atlanta History Center covers the Civil War and the South, and the Carter Presidential Library sits in landscaped grounds east of downtown. Add the Victorian houses of Inman Park and the 1920s Fox Theatre and you have two or three full days of sightseeing, not a week.

As the home of much of Southern hip-hop and trap, Atlanta has a club culture with a national reputation. Its big rooms play the music the city exports, and celebrity sightings are part of the draw. Edgewood Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward packs dive bars and small dance floors into a few blocks. Midtown is the centre of one of the largest LGBTQ nightlife scenes in the South. Buckhead has the dressier lounges and bottle-service clubs.

The catch is distance. Each area works as a separate pocket, and getting between them means a ride, so bar-hopping across the city is not really an option. Bars in the city keep going well past midnight, and weekends are lively, especially in warm weather.

Atlanta is a city of trees, and its tall hardwood canopy softens even the busy neighbourhoods. Piedmont Park and the BeltLine's walking and cycling trail give easy green space in town. Within half an hour you can climb the bare granite dome of Stone Mountain or Kennesaw Mountain's Civil War battlefield trails. You can also paddle or float the Chattahoochee River through wooded bluffs on the city's northern edge.

For real hiking, drive north. In about two hours you reach the Blue Ridge foothills, with Amicalola Falls and the southern end of the Appalachian Trail, Tallulah Gorge and the mountain lakes. Spring and autumn are the seasons for all of this, since summers are hot and humid. A car is essential.

The places within easy reach are pleasant rather than famous, and all of them need a car. Athens, about an hour and a half east, is a lively college town with antebellum houses and a well-known music history. Dahlonega, site of an early gold rush, has a small historic square and sits among the North Georgia vineyards. Madison has one of the best-preserved sets of pre-Civil War houses in the state, and Helen is a mock-Alpine village in the mountains.

Chattanooga, about two hours north, has a riverfront, a large aquarium and the Lookout Mountain sights. Georgia's best-known historic town, Savannah, is around four hours away, so it needs an overnight stay, not a day out.

Atlanta has plenty made for children. The Georgia Aquarium, among the largest anywhere, has whale sharks and beluga whales. Zoo Atlanta is known for its gorillas, and the Fernbank Museum has huge dinosaur skeletons and woodland trails. Around Centennial Olympic Park downtown are a hands-on children's museum and the World of Coca-Cola. In Midtown, the Center for Puppetry Arts is one of the best puppetry centres in the country, with shows and workshops for young audiences.

On the city's edges, Six Flags Over Georgia has roller coasters, and Stone Mountain Park adds a summit cable car and seasonal attractions. Hotels are roomy and restaurants are relaxed about children. The drawbacks are the driving between everything, heavy traffic and sticky summer heat, so spring and autumn are the easiest seasons with young children.

Atlanta was built around the car, and it shows. MARTA's rail lines are useful on one corridor. They run from the airport through downtown and Midtown to Buckhead, so a visitor staying along that line can reach the main downtown sights, the High Museum and Piedmont Park without driving. The BeltLine's Eastside Trail connects several walkable neighbourhoods on foot or by bike.

Beyond that, the city spreads across a wide, hilly metro area. The best restaurants, Stone Mountain, the theme park and anything out of town all need a car or a ride-hailing app. Motorway traffic is notoriously heavy at rush hour, and pavements disappear quickly once you leave the central districts.

Shopping in Atlanta mostly happens in malls, and the best of them are in Buckhead. Two large malls facing each other on Peachtree Road hold the department stores and luxury labels, and the streets of Buckhead Village nearby add designer boutiques. For something less polished, Little Five Points has vintage clothing, record shops and a counter-culture streak. The renovated warehouse markets along the BeltLine mix local makers with chain stores.

There is no distinctive local craft to take home and no historic market quarter. A visitor will find the familiar range of American retail done well, but not a reason to come.

Atlanta is one of the more reasonable big American cities. Hotel rooms, especially outside Buckhead and away from convention weeks, cost noticeably less than on either coast. Casual Southern cooking and the international restaurants along Buford Highway are fair value. The costs that add up are the ones many US cities share: tax and tips on every meal, car hire and parking, and steep entry charges at the big family attractions. The civil rights sites around the King park are free.

Atlanta has a broad performing arts scene. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, known for its choral recordings, plays at Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center. The Alliance Theatre in the same complex produces serious new work. The Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet run full seasons, and the ornate Fox Theatre, a 1920s movie palace, hosts touring Broadway shows and big concerts.

The city's other strength is popular music. As a centre of hip-hop, R&B and gospel, Atlanta draws a steady stream of major tours to its arenas. Mid-sized halls such as the Tabernacle, a converted church, and smaller rooms in Little Five Points and East Atlanta Village fill the gap between.

Atlanta is not a city people visit to slow down. The most interesting option comes from its large Korean community. In the suburbs along the northeastern motorways, about half an hour from the centre, big Korean-style bathhouses offer hot and cold pools, sauna rooms and long lounging halls, some of them open round the clock. Day spas and hotel spas in Buckhead and Midtown cover massages and treatments.

The gentler side of the city is its leafy residential streets and long mornings on shaded porches. The city's sprawl, traffic and humid summers otherwise keep the pace far from restful.