Best Tours Atlanta Georgia 2023

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Greetings, Internet Stranger, and welcome to the best tours Atlanta Georgia. Atlanta isn’t necessarily the most charming city in the South, but it’s got a ton going on. There’s an amazing food city, a lot of fascinating history, and plenty of cool neighborhoods that most tourists don’t know about.

On this list of the best tours Atlanta Georgia, I’m going to show you the two best food tours in the city. And if food tours aren’t your thing, I’ll show you the most Can’t Miss history tour out of all the best tours Atlanta Georgia.

Does that sound interesting to you? Then let’s not waste any more time!

Best Tours Atlanta Georgia

1) Inman Park Food Tour

I always recommend food tours as the best way to see a city. On a food tour, you learn about the culture and history of the place with a friendly local guide to assist you. Plus, you get to try a lot more amazing food than you would on your own. Sure, you can learn about the history of a place through its architecture, but isn’t it more interesting to learn about a city through its cuisine?

That’s why I recommend taking the Inman Park Food Tour right here. It’s definitely one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia. People think of Atlanta as being a modern city, home to corporations like Delta and Coca-Cola. And while that is true, it also has some charming historic neighborhoods, and I think Inman Park is the prettiest one.

I’m not going to tell you everything you can find on the tour, but I do want to give you enough information, so that you can decide for yourself if you’d enjoy this delicious experience.

Check rates and availability of the tour by clicking here!

Inman Park used to be a posh neighborhood decades ago. However, in the 1960s, the neighborhood began to decline because many of the residents had moved out to suburbs. Fortunately they realized that Atlanta is way more fun than any suburb and they started to move back!

And once the people moved back, the cool restaurants soon followed. We stopped at one of them to have our first delicious tasting and meet this adorable gentleman below who was guarding the bar.

And most importantly, we got to nosh on an amazing cheddar sandwich, served with onion marmalade and a house made beer mustard, paired with a bowl of decadent tomato soup. What could be a nicer combo?

At our next stop, we ate some snacks at a pub run by the daughter of Albert Einstein’s godson. (There’s some nice Einstein memorabilia on the walls.

Apparently this pub was once voted the best place to drink alone in Atlanta. I usually think the best place to drink alone is crying in bed while I watch reruns of Designing Women, but to be fair, my apartment isn’t in Atlanta.

This stop includes a drink! It’s a special refreshing vodka cocktail that’s made exclusively for the food tour.

And to eat, we snacked on chicken wings served with three different dips. The traditional is obviously the blue cheese dip, but I also enjoyed the barbecue sauce, which was made with Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The other snack was boiled peanuts, which are the official state snack of Georgia. They’re definitely Jimmy Carter approved, at least.

After all those snacks and drinks, you’re probably ready for a little dessert, no? Well, feast your eyes on this gorgeous cookie sandwich. She’s as delicious as she is beautiful, and she’s definitely ready for her Instagram close up.

I’m not saying that the chance to photograph this cookie makes this one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia…but I’m not saying it doesn’t eiether.

The tour doesn’t only include food–it also takes you past some of the most beautiful houses in Inman Park. You’ll have to take the tour right here if you want to learn more of the stories behind these houses. Many of them involved dramatic tales of that Atlanta social scene, which I’m sure all people can enjoy.

I also hope you’ll encounter a very dramatic looking jogger with a long, flowing white beard. Our guide told us that he has been given the nickname Fitness Santa, which is most appropriate. He’s definitely an important part of one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia.

The next dish is one that my Atlanta-based grandparents would never have eaten, not if I had paid them a billion dollars. I’m talking about kale salad. (OK, to be fair, I don’t actually have a billion dollars to pay people so they will eat some kale salad. But it’s the thought that counts.

And actually, I found this salad to be delicious, and just a little bit Southern because it was made with buttermilk dressing. So it would take a lot less than a billion dollars to get me to eat this salad.

One thing I really liked about Inman Park was the chance to see the Tiny Doors ATL project. The artist creates them all over the city, and each Tiny Door is unique. This is the Inman Park Tiny Door, and it’s decorated with butterflies, which are the symbol of the neighborhood.

See! Atlanta might not have as much charm as Charleston or New Orleans, but it’s still plenty cute and appealing. Getting the chance to meet the tiny doors is part of what makes this one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia.

Our final stop was at a local food hall where we visited two different vendors. One was serving up savory treats, and the other was dishing out sweet eats.

For the savory bite, we chomped on some spicy Szechuan dumplings! These dumplings are actually a secret recipe and the chef here is the only one who knows how to make them. Don’t you want to come to Atlanta to try our secret dumplings? I personally think you could build a great tourism campaign around that concept.

And for dessert, we got an warm apple turnover with cheddar cheese baked into the crust, for that down home, all American feel. And it was most fitting, since we started this food tour with some cheddar cheese in the sandwich and ended it with cheddar cheese in the dessert.

I have to admit that I couldn’t eat this turnover because I was so full from the rest of the food on the tour, so I just saved it for breakfast the next morning. Got to love a food tour that gives enough to eat for three meals. That’s why it’s one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia.

24 Hour Tip

Believe me when I say that wasn’t even half of the fascinating facts that I learned on the tour. So if you want to go ahead and meet fitness Santa for yourself…

Check rates and availability of the tour right here!

2) Grant Park Food Walk

I mentioned that Inman Park was my favorite neighborhood in Atlanta, so right now I’m going to take you to my second favorite neighborhood: Grant Park. We’ll see the most historic cemetery in the city, where we can meet my great-great-grandparents. That’s what made this one of the best tours Atlanta Georgia in my book! Then I’ll introduce you to some yummy treats!

On top of that, you won’t need to have breakfast or lunch when you take the Grant Park Food Walk because there’s so much to eat on this yummy tour.

Check rates and availability by clicking here.

Are you ready for Atlanta’s most famous seafood? Yeah, that’s a bit of a joke because Atlanta is a very landlocked city. However, people come to Atlanta from all over the South to make a living, which is why you can get Louisiana treats like this gorgeous piece of fried catfish.

Yes, it’s served with some fried okra. I know some people don’t like okra, but I promise the texture is much better when it’s fried. I mean, basically everything is better when it’s fried.

If you’re in the mood for some more Southern seafood, dive right in to these shrimp and grits. These aren’t your grandpappy’s shrimp and grits because they’re made with asparagus, cotija cheese, and roasted peppers, all of which made the already perfect grits even more delicious.

Our next stop might be even better because we get a drink with our food. Our guide let us know that Atlanta has always had a serious side and a sassy side. In fact, during the 1800s, there were two political parties in Atlanta.

One was called the Free and Rowdy Party and the other was called the Moral Party. (The Free and Rowdy party was more popular for obvious reasons.)

The drink here was a honeysuckle mule–very Southern–served with a pimento cheese and short rib sandwich, which is even more Southern. Some people call pimento cheese the caviar of the South, and I heartly concur. It’s one of my favorite things to eat when I go down South.

If you can handle another drink, get ready to go to a local liquor store where we can try several different Atlanta based beers and ciders. Don’t worry that you’ll be forced to drink IPAs here! We like our beers light in Atlanta because of the warm weather.

However, if you don’t drink booze, don’t worry! You can make do with a delicious local peach soda instead. (If it’s a local drink in Georgia, it’s gotta have peaches in it, y’all!)

Of course it’s not possible to say you’ve tried all the most famous foods in the South if you haven’t indulged in some hot chicken. And even though this is a Nashville specialty, you can get an excellent version right here in Grant Park. You’ll also get to hear the chicken’s backstory.

Apparently, there was a man in Nashville who was stepping out on his woman, and she decided to teach him a lesson by drowning his favorite fried chicken in hot sauce. She thought it would set his ears on fire, but instead it filled his tummy with glee. They started selling the hot chicken, and a new food star was born!

This last treat isn’t so Southern; it’s just a French butter cookie. However, it shows off Atlanta’s modern and cosmopolitan side because chic European cookies are now available here. When my great-great-grandparents were kids, I don’t think they had access to a cookie like this.

Even though the tour is mostly food, you also get a bunch of fascinating Atlanta history. I won’t spoil all, or even most of the secrets, but I do want to let you know what to expect.

First, you’ll learn how Atlanta became the capital city of Georgia. It’s a bit unusual because many American states did not select their largest city to be the capital. After all, New York isn’t the capital of New York, Philly isn’t the capital of Pennsylvania, and Sioux Falls isn’t even the capital of South Dakota.

You’ll even learn what Atlanta’s original name was and how it got the name Atlanta!

My favorite part of the tour was visiting Oakland Cemetery. Many famous Georgians are buried here, like Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind, Bobby Jones, a famous golfer, and Maynard Jackson, who was the first Black mayor of Atlanta.

It’s highly likely you’ve passed through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport at some point because it’s the busiest airport in the world. Well, he’s the Jackson in Hartsfield Jackson.

Finally, we visited the Jewish portion of this cemetery, and I actually found where my great-great-grandparents and my great-great uncle are buried. You can see their graves in my photo above, to prove I am not making this up.

I wonder what they’d think of knowing their graves were featured on my blog, but probably it would be hard enough to explain what a blog is.

24 Hour Tip

Those are all the secrets that I can share with you for now.

Check rates and availability of the tour by going here!

3) Martin Luther King National Park tour

The first of the best tours Atlanta Georgia I have introduced you to are both food tours. Up next, we have something different: a history tour about Atlanta’s most important and famous citizen: Martin Luther King Jr. You’ll get to explore the Sweet Auburn neighborhood and see where Dr. King grew up.

On top of that, you can actually visit the home where he was born and see the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he preached. But this tour will give you historical insights and perspectives that you can’t get anywhere else.

Check rates and availability for this tour right here.

The one area that isn’t included on the tour is a visit to Dr. King’s birth home. However, you can reserve a spot on the tour at the Visitor Center. These spots are first come first serve, so I suggest going here as early in your day as possible.

The King family still owns the house, so you can’t take photos inside the building. However, the rangers will be able to give you plenty of information about the family and the home. Dr. King was born inside the house because at the time it was more common for children to be born at home than in a hospital. He lived in this exact home until he was 12 years old.

I had a hard time imagining an icon like Dr. King as an elementary school student. I have taught elementary school myself, and it’s impossible for me to envision someone so important as a little kid in one of my reading classes. But I suppose every great human being was a child once!

On the tour, you’ll definitely get to see the Ebenezer Baptist Church, which has a complicated and tragic history. Before coming to Sweet Auburn, I didn’t realize that Dr. King’s mother had been killed in the church by a deranged gunman.

The shooter claimed to be taking revenge on Christianity, but I don’t think we’ll ever really understand why he did it.

However, despite this tragedy, the Ebenezer Baptist Church played an extremely important role in the Civil Rights movement. The current senior pastor is Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is the first Black senator ever elected from Georgia. So we can see that the church is playing an important role in Atlanta’s history to this day.

On the tour, you’ll get to see many hidden gems like Historic Fire Station No. 6. This fire station was the first racially integrated firehouse in Atlanta.

It’s no longer a working firehouse, but when you visit here, you’ll be able to learn the history of the first brave Black American firefighters who served their city under racist conditions.

You’ll also be able to see the signs explaining Dr. King’s six principles of nonviolence that he used as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. If only more people would live by these principles today!

24 Hour Tip

Those are all the secrets of the Civil Rights Tour that I can share with you for now.

Check rates and availability by going here to find out the rest.

Best Tours Atlanta Georgia

Where to Stay?

Atlanta’s a big city with many different spread-out neighborhoods. But I like staying in Downtown Atlanta because it’s easy to reach many of the best tours Atlanta Georgia right away. Also it’s near the subway system, aka MARTA. Everyone likes to rag on MARTA, but it’s still better than Atlanta traffic!

Anyway, that’s why I recommend Hyatt House Atlanta Downtown. The rooms are huge, there’s a free breakfast spread every morning with many options, and the staff has that friendly Southern charm. Also it’s in a great, safe location. You can’t do better in this price range.

If you want a great deal on this hotel, click here.

And if you’re looking for other great deals on tons of other hotels in Atlanta, click here.

This search engine will help you find the perfect place to stay during your plans for your time with the best tours Atlanta Georgia. With plenty of options to choose from, I’m sure you’ll find something for your schedule and budget.

Best Tours Atlanta Georgia

What to Pack?

• A cell charger so you can keep your cell phone charged for the entire best tours Atlanta Georgia experience
• My favorite guidebook to Atlanta
• The most reliable travel umbrella that is small enough to fit in my purse, but strong enough to stand up to powerful winds during our day with the best tours Atlanta Georgia
• These great TSA approved clear toiletries bags, so I can always keep spare toothpaste and travel sized toiletries in any carry-on.
• My book Get Lost, that I wrote myself with all my best travel tips. This book will show you how travel can take you on a journey of self-discovery.

That’s the Best Tours Atlanta Georgia

What do you think are the Best Tours Atlanta Georgia? Are you ready to start booking your hotel in Atlanta right now? Please email me at stellajane@aroundtheworldin24hours.com and let me know.

Note: If you want to know how I put my travel itineraries together, just click here.

You should also try 24 hours in Atlanta. Check out what to do Downtown Atlanta. Go on a Martin Luther King Atlanta museum tour. Get going on the best Atlanta Tripadvisor things to do. Experience an Inman Park Atlanta Georgia tour.