It's Hoppin' in Hot-lanta!

It's a big city with an easy-going personality, a place that appreciates nature and culture and good food and good times. Atlanta was the focus of attention during the Olympics. It hadn't seen that much action since Sherman's March to the Sea. Now the crowds are gone and it's time to relax and enjoy wide variety of attractions it has to offer.

One of the best things about Atlanta is its excellent mass transit system. While you'll need to drive to many places, the in-town attractions are all easily reached without needing to fight traffic or trying to find a parking place. You'll also find that the tourism maps are generally very good, with most of them using both street names and landmarks.

"This is CNN." You can't possibly enter the soaring skyscraper that houses Ted Turner's broadcasting empire without uttering those words in your best James Earl Jones imitation. During your tour, you'll get to watch live broadcasts from behind the scenes, learn about special effects, and have a chance to be part of a live broadcast yourself. If you want to start a second career, you can even make your own audition videotape at the souvenir store.

A short walk away is Olympic Park, scene of the city's ongoing street party during the summer Olympics. Its character has completely changed, and it is now a cheerfully-open area of fountains and broad brick walkways. The bricks were all purchased as part of the fundraising for the Olympics. Each one has the name of the donor on it. If you were one of those who bought a brick, you can spend hours looking for it, although there is a central location registry to help you get started.

Underground Atlanta is a 6-block-long shopping and entertainment district. Part of it is actually underground -- it has to do with how the city rebuilt some of its roadways. It is a very lively area and one of the centers of Atlanta's nightlife. If the thought of hiking those six blocks seems too much, never fear; there's a trolley service to take you from one shop to another.

Of course, shopping works up a thirst. Good thing, then, that The World of Coca-Cola is at one end of Underground Atlanta. When you are finished your self-guided tour, you will know everything you ever wanted about the world's most popular soda pop. (An average 7-thousand Coca-Cola beverages are consumed every second somewhere in the world. The Equator runs right through the center of the bottling plant in Brazil.) Well, almost everything. The secret formula is kept in a vault in a nearby bank.

At the end of the tour, you enter the Fountain Room. Great streams of Coca-Cola products shoot across the room to waiting glasses, never missing their mark or hitting a tourist. At the "Tastes of the World" exhibit, you can sample 22 different soft drinks made by Coca-Cola around the world. Try the tutti-fruitti flavor from Mexico, Germany's orange and cola-flavored mix, of the very healthy Japanese Vegita-Beta -- apricot-flavored fortified with beta-carotene.

A few blocks east is the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. It's in the center of the "Sweet Auburn" preservation district, Auburn Avenue being the largest and most prosperous African-American business and residential district in the south in the years after WWII. The historic site includes the Visitors Center, where you'll see videos and displays about Dr. King's life as leader of the civil rights movement, and can tour the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was minister, his boyhood home, and his gravesite.

Stone Mountain, Georgia, is the site of the world's largest single piece of sculptural art. The massive relief of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis is carved onto the side of the mountain. The mountain itself is the world's largest granite outcropping, rising 825 feet above the otherwise flat Georgia landscape. The 3,000-acre park surrounding it has a lakeside RV park with most sites enjoying a water view, woodlands, recreation areas, museums, and other attractions. For RVers , Stone Mountain is a particularly handy destination, since the park is right on the mass transit line.

The main museum focuses on the carving, and it covers not just the technical aspects of designing and carving the thing, but a lot of the personal stories behind it. (Before it was finished, three sculptors had worked on it. When one of them left, the sculptor who took over the job blew up the first man's work!)

Several of the other museums are concerned with the Civil War. Several buildings were moved from other locations to create an authentic antebellum plantation. It's a self-guided tour that demonstrates how each plantation operated as an independent community.

Fans of "Gone With the Wind" will want to visit the "Road to Tara" exhibit located in another restored building. It has a collection of movie memorabilia, foreign editions of the book, and displays about the life of Margaret Mitchell.

Right outside the park is the Village of Stone Mountain. This is a charming slice of small-town America where you can browse through shops where the merchants know most of the customers and relax in the town park while licking an ice cream cone. The town hall is the train station and the visitor's center is an old caboose. There are a lot of tourists, but it is not a tourist-y town.

The Fernbank Museum of Natural History is one of the best thought-out museums of its kind. When you notice that even the floors of the elevators are made of fossil-filled stone, you know that someone thought out all of the details very carefully.

That's certainly the case with "A Walk Through Georgia." This is a series of interconnected, full-sized dioramas that take your through Georgia's different ecological districts. They are very large and very detailed with trees, plants, water and animals in realistic setting. Creative use of lighting and sound effects to make you feel as though you are really there. In the Okefenoke Swamp, for example, you stand on a boardwalk, surrounded by trees and hanging moss, while the lights shift and you experience an entire 'day' in a few minutes. (If you feel as though you are being watch, you are -- sort of. There's a large hawk 'soaring' above you. It's real, but not alive. Just a bird preserved by a talented taxidermist. Just like the black snake it's holding in its talons.)

The museum even has two kid-sized, kid-styled versions of the walk -- one for pre-preschoolers and one for kindergarten-aged kids. It's a place where they can climb around and throw things and yell a little without being scolded. There are even benches where parents can sit and watch while the kids burn off some energy.

Older kids will stay occupied at the "Spectrum of the Senses" exhibit. There are 51 stations that demonstrate the principles of light and sound through a whole lot of interactive games and displays. The museum also has Georgia's only IMAX theater. If you've never gone to one of these movies, don't miss the chance. The screen is five stories high and 72 feet wide, engulfing your entire field of vision. The quality of the film is incredibly excellent, and the whole experience gives a new meaning to the phrase "I felt like I was really there."

You'll get some of that same feeling at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. This is one of the best collections of art and household items from ancient Egypt, Greece, Africa, Asia and the Americas. The architect incorporated elements of the culture being displayed in the design of the rooms. Not enough to be obvious, but enough to add atmosphere. For example, the room containing the Egyptian mummy is roughly designed like the inside of a Pharaoh's tomb. The Greek rooms definitely owe their design to temples. The museum's guidebook is particularly nice. It doesn't just label each item, but tells where it came from, what it was used for, why it was designed this way, and how it was made.

More modern examples of international culture are found along Buford Highway, known as the International Village. This is the largest concentration of ethnic neighborhoods and businesses in the Southeast. In the many small shopping centers lining the road, you'll find Chinese artwork, British rainwear, Indian brass and rosewood, Russian tea shops, and stores selling music and instruments from around the world. Ever wanted to buy a tape of Kenny Roger's "The Gambler" sung in Vietnamese? Here's where you'll find it. As you might expect, you'll also find an incredible collection of restaurants serving food from around the world. You can visit a different country at every meal for a week and still not try them all.

But if you find a delicacy you really like, you can probably buy it at Your DeKalb Farmer's Market. This massive warehouse of food has produce, seafood, meats, pastries, cheeses, grains, wines and beers from everywhere. There are flags from countries I never knew existed hanging from the ceiling and foods I've never heard of waiting to be squeezed for freshness in the bins. Get there early, and you'll be overwhelmed by the scent of fresh-baked breads and pastries. Don't be in a rush. Enjoy browsing through the aisles and savoring the sights and sounds of nature's bounty. If you buy everything that looks good, you won't have room enough to stow it all in your RV.
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