The Atlanta Fan Fest takes place in Centennial Olympic Park, a park that takes up five city blocks in downtown Atlanta. The park was developed for the 1996 Olympics, and it is now a central tourist destination ringed by the Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola museum, College Football Hall of Fame, Children’s Museum of Atlanta, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. It is also across the street from the former CNN Center which is currently being redeveloped, and it is a few minutes’ walk from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the venue for the FIFA games, as well as State Farm Arena, the basketball arena.

Perhaps most importantly for me, Centennial Park is a 5-minute walk from my office. I have an annual pass for Georgia Aquarium, so it’s easy for me to pop over there during my lunch hour or after work to watch the underwater animals. It also meant it was easy for me to walk over there during lunch on my first week back in the office. I wanted to see what the deal was with Fan Fest and see the global visitors in downtown Atlanta.

At the end of that week on Saturday, Chad and I went to Fan Fest to watch the Croatia-Ghana game. We got there at 4pm, the game started at 5pm, and we left at half-time at 6pm because it was so hot.

We did walk all around Fan Fest. All of the corporate sponsors had booths/tents. One thing that was cool was that there were water-bottle-filling stations for free, which was important since it’s July in Georgia. The England game was playing on the biggest screen, and the Croatia games was on the smaller screens.

Then on July 1, we went back to Fan Fest for the USA game. I told Chad that I wanted to watch the American team play in America and watch with a bunch of Americans. Check. For this game, the free tickets for the general admission area were “sold out,” so I splurged and bought tickets to the GA+ area, and I’m so glad I did. The general admission area was packed like sardines, standing-room only. And while our paid area was full, we still had room to move around and sit down during the breaks and we had a perfect central view to the main screen.

The USA won the game that night. And as we walked out, the DJ played “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khalid and everyone sang along which was perfect.

Through all three of these perspectives of the Fan Fest – walking around during my lunch hour, the free admission, and the GA+ special admission – it’s been amazingly cool to see so many people from around the world. And honestly, the most obnoxious experience was the USA game – the screaming and obscenities and people throwing things, it was disappointing. But I’m glad we’ve been able to experience the World Cup for these weeks in Atlanta.

We bought tickets to one World Cup game in Atlanta. We got them through the lottery last fall, and, at the time, we had no idea which countries would be playing in the game. I was very excited this spring when I learned that Spain would be playing, as they were favored (at the time) to win the tournament.

Mercedes-Benz Stadium was built about 10 years ago, and it is a beautiful stadium.

We’ve been there to watch a few Atlanta United soccer games.

We also got to go on a private tour of the building with some of my Gensler colleagues in 2019. The stadium is used for the Atlanta United soccer team and also for the Atlanta Falcons football team.

Due to FIFA rules, there were some transformations to the stadium for the World Cup. First of all, the US football field size is about 10 yards narrower than a FIFA soccer field, so some of the lower spectator seating was removed to widen the field. Also, FIFA doesn’t allow any commercial branding, so the Mercedes-Benz signage on the facade was covered up, and the stadium is temporarily called Atlanta Stadium. The ban on branding also translated inside where locally branded concession areas were given generic names. Even the branding on things like condiment bottles and restroom soap dispensers had to be covered up. Crazy. 

We went to the game with Chad’s sister, Michele, and our friend Hans and approximately 68,000 other people. It was so much fun to watch the game live and in person and feel the energy of a stadium full of people.

My favorite part, though, was being in a crowd with people from all over the world and speaking a variety of languages. We met Saudi Arabians on the way inside, and some guys from Guatemala sat behind us during the game. It was so cool to be part of a global community event.

After the game, we walked around the area, in the intense summer heat, to check out the pop-up shops in the Gulch area (lame) and to visit the newly renovated former CNN center which so far seems to only be a re-do of the food court (also lame).

We then headed back to Marta for the short ride home. We got home around 4pm and did nothing for the rest of the day, exhausted from the heat. But the experience was totally worth it.

Today marks the 250th birthday of the U.S.A. This is a significant milestone and there should be a happy sense of national pride. Instead, Donald Trump has politicized the day and polarized the nation over the last year and a half. There is a failed State Fair on the National Mall where several states have declined to participate. Trump has announced that he is going to give a speech before the DC fireworks show and that he will speak for hours just to show people that he can do so. There’s the saga of the algae in the Reflecting Pool and the subsequent arrests of visitors who had nothing to do with the water quality problem. Of course, these are minor things compared to the litany of terrible things that this administration has unleashed. I’ll leave that there for now.

I remember the 200th anniversary in 1976. I would have been 5 years old, but I remember going to watch the fireworks with my family and understanding that it was a big year for the U.S.A. It’s funny how things stick with you and you can remember them 50 years later.

Here in Atlanta, Chad and I don’t typically go anywhere to watch fireworks. During the first years that we were in our house, we could see the fireworks in downtown Atlanta from our top porch. Since then, though, the trees have grown tall enough that we no longer see downtown. Maybe we can see the show if we stand in the middle of the street in front of our house. Technically, it’s a clear shot to downtown (and I know this since I walk that way to work).

During my Italian lesson this morning, my tutor, Francesco, asked me if people truly celebrate the Fourth as a significant day of independence. I told him (in Italian, of course) that I think most people just treat it as another summer holiday by going to the lake, grilling, drinking beer, similar to Memorial Day or Labor Day. Of course, people do recognize it as the birthday of our country, but for most it’s a day off of work and a day to hang out with family and friends. However, I do appreciate what we have in this country, despite the current administration, and I feel fortunate to be an American.

In lieu of posting photos of fireworks, here are photos of summertime flowers this week. We have new flowers blooming in our yard.

And there are lots of flowers blooming around the neighborhood.

There’s a big patch of yellow flowers along the creek in Springvale Park:

There were yellow irises blooming along this creek in April:

I don’t know what kind of tree this is, but these spiky balls are interesting:

I like how this grass is seeding:

And finally, there’s this bad boy. Agave plants, also known as century plants, store up energy for years and then bloom once when they are somewhere 8-30 years old. This plant is 10 years old. When the flower stalk first appeared, it grew 4 feet in 10 days! The stalks grow to 15-20 feet, and flowers appear within 1-2 months. After flowering, the main plant dies over the course of 3-6 months. This yard had another agave that bloomed last year, and it was cool to walk by it over the months and see the changes. That plant died over a few months and is no longer there. There is a third agave in the yard, so maybe it will bloom next year.

Today is our wedding anniversary. It’s really hard to believe that we’ve been married for 19 years. It just doesn’t feel like our wedding was that far in the past.

We met in January 2006, had our first date in February, and got engaged in October. We didn’t start planning the wedding right away because I just wanted to enjoy being engaged before adding the stress of wedding plans. 

Wedding plans began in earnest in February 2007 and were really quite easy once we decided on a venue. We had a friend from Mexico who recommended Hotel Lagunita in Yelapa, Mexico as a popular place to get married. We knew that most of our friends and family would be flying to the wedding and most had already been to visit San Francisco, so we figured, as long as people have to fly, let’s all fly to Mexico! Plus, my good friend Amber had gotten married a year earlier, and I had heard all about the financial shenanigans of planning a wedding in the United States. We were able to keep our costs pretty reasonable by having our wedding in another country.

Like I mentioned, the planning was pretty easy. We had some phone calls with Lucas, the American ex-pat who owned the hotel, and the planning went like this:

“Do you want fish or chicken for the wedding dinner?”

“Can we have both?”

“Yes.”

And the dinner planning was finished.

“Do you want a wedding cake? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Planning complete.

I can’t remember which one of us came up with the idea of fireworks, but we asked Lucas if it was possible to have fireworks. He said, yes, he could get commercial-grade fireworks for $40 each, so we ordered 10. It was fabulous.

We did some research into the colors of Mexico and came up with grass green, saturated red and bold blue as our wedding colors. My wedding dress was red (custom-made), and Chad wore a green shirt and white pants. My grandmothers couldn’t understand a red wedding dress, but after living in the Bay Area for several years, my skin was so pale that I thought a red dress would be better than a white one, and it was stunning.

So, we started wedding plans in February, sent out save the dates in March, and got married in June, and we saved money along the way. Chad’s friend Brian is a professional photographer, so we paid for his flight and his hotel room and he gave us his photography services as our wedding gift. Chad designed the wedding invitations and got them printed through an online service. Despite the fact that my dress was custom-made, it was cheaper than a traditional wedding dress, and I got to design the exact dress that I wanted, down to the embroidered beading.

We made a CD of music as gifts for our guests, and Chad did a great job of finding dance tracks as well as songs by Mexican and Brazilian artists. It’s still my favorite “mix tape.” We also put together goodie baskets for our guests with things like flashlights, bug spray, and Immodium, you know, the things that come in handy when you’re staying at the beach in Mexico. I also made a “who’s who” of guests so people could learn more about each other. Most of our guests, including our parents, had never met.

We flew into Puerto Vallarta on Thursday and stayed in a hotel for two nights. On Friday, we met Lucas who took us to a flower shop to order the flowers for the wedding and a couple of other shops to buy things for the gift baskets. We also went to get our marriage blood tests (I don’t think we ever saw the test results) and sat through a mandatory pre-wedding about how wives are equal to husbands. It was strange to us. 

Then we went to the courthouse to register the marriage. We met with a judge who married us on the spot, something neither of us was expecting. I was wearing a cute dress, and Chad was wearing shorts and a soccer jersey and I joked to him, “That’s what you wore for our wedding?”

My BFF and my aunt and uncle arrived that afternoon and we all spent the night at the hotel. The next day, most of the rest of our guests flew in and we all boarded a boat for Yelapa. One thing I forgot to mention is that Yelapa is a tiny village on a small bay that is surrounded by mountains and jungle. There are no roads into Yelapa; instead, you have to take a boat 45 minutes down the coast from Puerto Vallarta.

So most of us arrived in Yalapa on Saturday afternoon. We got married on a Tuesday, because I wanted everyone to have a couple of days to get to know each other before the wedding so the ceremony wouldn’t be in front of an audience of strangers. Those extra couple of days were perfect for people to meet each other, and it also gave me and Chad an opportunity to relax and spend time with our guests as opposed to a frenetic American Wedding Day.

All in all, it was the best wedding I’ve ever been to. Highlights include the crabs which came out of the jungle and haunted us for the week, the pig slaughter and pig roast for the rehearsal dinner, the tres leches wedding cake, the coconut shrimp, hanging out at the pool, the blown electrical transformer which killed the power for the whole village, scorpions and fruit bats, and being able to spend several days with some of my favorite people in the whole world.

These happy memories are still vivid in my mind, and this is why I can’t believe it’s been 19 years. We’ve had a lot of adventures since then and are scheming new ones as I write this. I look forward to the next however-many years.

The 2026 World Cup starts this week with matches held across North America  from June 11 to July 19. Atlanta is hosting eight games including five group stage matches, two elimination matches, and one semi-final game. I’ve read that city officials are expecting 65,000 people per game. I’ve also read that they anticipate 300,000 visitors to the city, so I’m not sure how that reconciles with 65,000 per game. In any case, that’s a lot of people, and Atlanta has been preparing for several years.

The 2026 World Cup was awarded to the Canada – Mexico – United States bid in 2018. I first started seeing preparations in 2024 when MARTA began renovations on the central Five Points Station downtown. That’s the station that I use for my work commute, so I’ve seen the progress over the last couple of years. Quite honestly, the work doesn’t seem like a vast improvement, just some new tile and ceilings, but maybe the upgrades will be more apparent when the work is complete in 2028. In the meantime, it’s been a maze of plywood barricades for many months.

In addition to updating some of the train stations, MARTA has also installed a new payment system. You used to buy a plastic card that you would refill at machines at each station. Now there is still the option of cards, but you can also use your phone to pay directly from your bank account. I haven’t tried this because I have a monthly commuter card through my work, but Chad will get to try it when we go to a game on June 21st.

One thing I’ve only heard about recently is that MARTA is supposed to roll out a new fleet of 224 train cars. This was originally supposed to happen last year. As recently as last week, the cars still hadn’t been put into play. In fact, the required safety tests hadn’t even been performed. I’m wondering if those cars will make an appearance before the World Cup is over.

I’ve seen other work happening downtown around my office. Statues are being cleaned and fixed up. Streets are being repaved. The park across from my office has had a facelift. The pedestrian boardwalk on Broad Street is getting fixed up and/or replaced. I hear there are new street murals downtown. There’s also a new city park large enough for outdoor concerts, and it will have free screenings of soccer games during the Cup. Since I broke my arm, I haven’t been back to the office so I haven’t seen the downtown landscape lately. It will be interesting to see how things look.

Speaking of going to the office, my company announced that staff would be permitted to work from home on the days that games are held in Atlanta. My office is a few minutes’ walk from the stadium, so everyone’s expecting the downtown neighborhood to be a zoo and that it will be difficult for people to drive to the office. I’m sure plenty of co-workers are excited about the option of extra work days at home, but I immediately thought, “Are you kidding? I want to be right in the middle of things and experience all of the excitement downtown!”

Chad and I have tickets to one of the games, and we plan to go to other events and free screenings during the World Cup. Stay tuned for updates over the next few weeks!

The historic Oakland Cemetery was founded in 1850 and covers 48 acres just east of downtown Atlanta. Over 70,000 people are buried here including Atlanta mayors, Georgia governors, Union and Confederate soldiers, paupers in unmarked graves, and others. Some recognizable names include author Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and musician Kenny Rogers.

The Illumine festival happens in the cemetery every April. We walked over from our house and arrived at dusk.

As the sun goes down, colorful lighting illuminates grave markers, mausoleums, and other structures around the property. Trees and other vegetation are also highlighted with a variety of colors. We’d been to the cemetery previously during the day, so it was cool to see it after dark.

In addition to the cemetery-wide mood lighting, there were also lighted art installations by several Atlanta-area artists. This year, 11 artists were featured, and some of the artists were on hand to talk about their work. Art media ranged from neon to holograms to LED to projection and more.

There were also musicians staged around the property. There was one guy in particular who really caught our attention. He was a cellist who used a loop machine to record layer upon layer upon layer of rhythms and melodies to make it sound like there were several instruments playing together. He would even include tapping and knocking on the wooden body of the cello to create percussion tracks. It was really cool. We stuck around so we could listen to his whole performance, and then we chatted with him afterwards and bought a CD. You can find his videos online by searching for OkCello on YouTube.

Of course, there were snacks booths set up around the cemetery plus a merchandise booth selling items from the cemetery museum shop. There were also port-o-potties available.

All in all, it was a really fun evening.

For this year’s Inman Park Festival, I had planned out our whole weekend to tour some homes, listen to great music, and eat lots of festival food. Instead, this happened.

I didn’t get to see much of the festival at all due to a broken arm.

I anticipated being very busy during Festival weekend because there were so many things I wanted to see and do. In anticipation, I had drafted a blog post beforehand. Even though we didn’t get to see much of the festival, I wanted to be sure to capture the event, and I have lots of photos from previous years that give an idea of what the weekend is like.

The Arts and Crafts Market and The Street Market

There are something like 400 vendors who participate in the festival. Several streets become pedestrian-only, and a crowd of people come into the neighborhood. Sometimes the streets feel like they’re crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with people.

Food and Drink

The Inman Park Festival has a plethora of food vendors that offer festival staples such as hand pies, barbecue, gyros, sausages, sandwiches, and other street food. I always get excited about the fact that there is a corndog stand a block away from my house for two whole days, and I did manage to get a jalapeno corndog. Last year I discovered a food truck that does great crepes, so I made a point of going there again, but they were sold out. There are also plenty of beer trucks and wine and cocktail vendors if you’re thirsty. I mostly stuck around the house and tried to rest. There’s always next year!

Music

There are three music stages set up around the neighborhood, and groups perform from noon until 7 or 8 pm each day. There is always a wide variety of music including, rock, jazz, blues, Cajun, folk, indie, soul, R&B, Latin, bluegrass, funk, Americana, and so much more. This year, there were 29 musical groups, and we managed to see none of them.

Dance Festival

This year was the 25th anniversary of the Inman Park Dance Festival with a free performance on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the Trolley Barn. Six dance organizations participated, and performances included classical ballet blended with African dance forms, Honors Program students from Emory University’s Dance & Movement Studies Program, a solo performance, a modern dance company with artists with and without apparent and non-apparent disabilities, an athletic dance company, and an Inman Park dance school for ages 3 through adult.

Little Gnome Zone

During Festival each year, the Little Gnome Zone is set up in Springvale Park. This kids’ zone is especially designed to help get the wiggles out of the youngest Inman Park Festival goers. In addition to the permanent playground in the park, there’s a bounce house, arts and crafts activities, face painting, circus and aerial acts, and a variety of drinks and snacks for sale. This year, there was also a K-pop dance party with a DJ on Saturday afternoon.

Tour of Homes

Inman Park was founded in 1889 as Atlanta’s first planned suburb, an elegant neighborhood with its own privately operated street car system. Over time, however, the area fell into decline, and by the early 1970s it had become a neglected, redlined neighborhood facing serious challenges. Recognizing the enduring charm and potential of its historic houses, a small group of determined buyers stepped in. They worked to convince lenders and insurance providers that Inman Park was once again a worthy place for investment. In 1972, these trailblazing residents opened their recently acquired homes to the public to highlight their restoration work, giving rise to what is now the Inman Park Tour of Homes.

The Parade

The annual parade takes place on Saturday afternoon. Billed as the quirkiest and most colorful parade in Atlanta, it includes marching bands, floats, art cars, drill teams, mascots, clowns, jugglers, politicians, and much, much more. We did manage to see the parade this year as we returned home from urgent care just 15 minutes before the parade started.

The parade starts in front of our house which adds to the excitement every year. A couple of hours before the start time, parade participants begin showing up on our corner. We can hear bagpipes and marching bands practicing, we see people in colorful costumes milling around, and local and state politicians arrive with their chauffeurs and convertibles. One of my favorite parts of the weekend is watching the head parade marshal (not to be confused with the Grand Marshal) with her bullhorn as she organizes the groups and shouts at them each in turn to start marching down the parade route.

The parade is always led by a Grand Marshal who is chauffeured in a fancy car.

There are always politicians and political messages from various groups.

Some of the parade groups were what you’d expect from a traditional parade.

Other participants are more on the fun-loving, silly side.

The Gnome Tradition

When we first moved here, there was a group of people marching in the parade dressed as garden gnomes. They were trying to break a Guiness record for the largest gathering of people dressed as gnomes. There was already an established record in England with 478 people. The Atlanta group marched in the parade for several years before finally breaking the record with 755 people in 2018. Since then, gnomes continue to participate in Inman Park Festival albeit in much smaller numbers. And you can find tiny gnome hats in the neighborhood throughout the year.

While the main festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, there are activities on Friday as well. The Tour of Homes starts on Friday afternoon and runs through the weekend. This year I did a volunteer shift for one of the homes and checked people’s tickets. It was so much fun. I met a lot of people (the tour was really busy  on Friday), and I got to see familiar faces from the neighborhood. You buy your ticket ahead of time, and then each house is a self-guided tour. Can you imagine being a home-owner and having hundreds of people traipsing through your house over three days? No, thank you. There were no photos allowed in the house where I volunteered which is the owner’s prerogative, but here’s the facade.

One of the houses was very interesting due to the fact that it was in the middle of a renovation. And the owners were living through it all with their infant son and very large dog. They thought they were just going to scrape and repaint the walls, but they uncovered structural damage and failing plaster in the process. I’m guessing this is what it was like for neighborhood “pioneers” in the 1970s who were buying decrepit old houses and fixing them up while living in them.

Another interesting house was built by neighborhood friends in 2002. The husband is an architect and a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. You can see Wright’s influence in the design. It’s funny, Chad and I had been there for dinner and Chad had attended many festival committee planning meetings in the house, but we had never gotten a full tour.

The other event on Friday evening is the Butterfly Ball. The event is an annual fundraiser for neighborhood theater groups. We did go this year but we’ve gone previously, and it’s a fun evening with dinner, a band, and dancing. I took some photos while the catering crew and music stage guys were setting up earlier in the afternoon. As you can see in the photos, this year’s theme was Alice in Wonderland.

The annual Inman Park Festival and Tour of Homes started in 1972 as a way to attract attention to the gentrification efforts that sought to revitalize the area. Over the previous decades, Inman Park had fallen victim to neglect and disrepair and then to redlining. That’s when a small group of Inman Park homeowners came together to plan the first festival. Their goal was simple – to raise awareness of efforts to save and restore the historic homes that make up the heart of the neighborhood. Over the years, Inman Park Festival has evolved from a single afternoon with 3,000 guests to a three-day festival that attracts over 45,000 people.

The Inman Park Festival takes months of planning, over 700 volunteers, and thousands of hours of hard work. It is completely run by volunteers, making it one of the largest volunteer-run festivals in the Southeast. Proceeds from the festival fund projects like historic preservation, sidewalk restoration, neighborhood beautification, education, and other projects that benefit Inman Park and the surrounding communities.

Each year, the days and weeks leading up to the festival are full of anticipation as signs of preparation appear around the neighborhood. Temporary power poles go up, and American flags are installed along the streets. There are volunteer events to clean up the neighborhood parks, and people tidy their own yards and plant flowers. The City of Atlanta street sweepers come through the day before, and the whole neighborhood is gussied up and ready for a party. In anticipation of the festival, here is what happens in the neighborhood.

About 6 weeks before the event, the temporary power poles are installed. These are used by the music stages and some of the food vendors. 

Signs go up advertising the festival and asking for volunteers to sign up.

Tickets for the Tour of Homes go on sale. Inman Park residents get a discount.

Two weeks before the event, the flags show up. I saw these flags around the neighborhood this week. Now I know we’re getting close to Festival!

During the week before the festival, we start to see No Parking signs and street barricades delivered. During the event, several neighborhood streets are blocked off to create a pedestrian zone. The streets are lined with booths for the arts and crafts fair and the street market, and there is no room for cars. If you live on one of these streets, you have to either put your car in your driveway and leave it there all weekend or move your car to another part of the neighborhood if you plan on driving somewhere during the weekend.

A couple of days before Festival, the golf carts are delivered. Since the area becomes a car-free zone during the festival, golf carts are used by the staff and volunteers to deliver ice, to take away trash, and to run other errands.

Port-o-potties are also delivered, because, well you know…

On the Thursday before festival, the local preschool organizes hay rides for the kids, and a couple of older neighbors drive groups around the neighborhood. What I can’t figure out is where these guys store the tractors during the rest of the year. It’s not like we have farms and barns around here.

On the Friday of Festival weekend, the music tents go up, stages for the musicians are erected, and chairs for the audience are set up. Bike racks are arranged at the bike valet stations for guests who arrive on bicycle. Directional signposts are also staged around the neighborhood. The food vendors set up their tents and park their food trucks.

At 6 am on Saturday morning, the vendors start to arrive and set up their booths.

By 11 am when the festival begins and people start streaming into the neighborhood, I am positively vibrating with excitement about the weekend ahead…

The Freedom Farmers Market is a year-round market held in the parking lot of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center. The Carter Center is in our neighborhood, a 25-minute walk or a short drive away, and we generally go every Saturday morning. We go at 8:30 am because it can get really crowded, especially in the spring and summer when the weather is nice and the produce is abundant.

It’s a large market with a wide variety of vendors – fruit and vegetables, mushrooms, bread and pastries, shrimp, beef, chicken, eggs, and cheese as well as a couple of breakfast stalls and booths selling packaged goods like jams, kimchi, honey, and cured meats. In our early days in the neighborhood, the market was smaller during the winter, but now there are plenty of vendors during the colder months to make the weekly trip worthwhile.

The food costs more than the offerings at the grocery store, but we’re okay with that. It’s all organic and, because it’s local and in season and just picked, it tastes so much better. Plus, we like to support small, local farms and businesses. We visit the farmers market on Saturday morning, and based on what we buy, we then plan our meals and grocery shopping for the upcoming week. We eat what’s in season, and the result is a varied menu throughout the year. 

We’re fortunate to have such a great resource within walking distance of our house. In addition to providing healthy food choices, it’s a fun part of our weekly routine and it offers creative culinary inspiration throughout the year.