Atlanta's city parks are really awesome. The botanical garden this year has Alice in Wonderland as its main theme, and they did a great job recreating scenes from the story. Though they're charging $30 just to get in.

They've gentrified some of the little streets, and now they're really nice to walk around. The residential areas aren't bad either. If you stick to the good neighborhoods, it's actually a beautiful city overall. But if you venture into or even just pass through the rougher areas, what really stands out is the number of homeless people and panhandlers compared to smaller cities—though it's nowhere near New York levels. At intersections, drivers were aggressively asked for money more than once. Unlike Belgrade though, nobody actually handed anything over here.

I found it interesting that until 1905, Atlanta had several one-person jails. These were these metal booths where they'd lock up offenders until a police car showed up (they called them "Black Marias" here). The black booth in the photo is one of them. You wouldn't want to spend much time in one of those in the heat, which is basically why they stopped using them. Later they sold them all off, but they recently managed to restore one back to its historic location.