Come Fly With Me

How much do you know about the city where you live? If you've been to Savannah, Chicago, Charleston, or New York, you've probably taken guided tours and visited attractions. But how often have you done those same things at home? I've often found it strange that we know more about the history of other cities than we do about our own.

This has been on my mind lately because Phoenix Flies starts March 5.  Organized by the Atlanta Preservation Center, Phoenix Flies is a two-week event of free tours of Atlanta neighborhoods, parks, churches, historic homes and sites.  That's right. I said free.

• Have you read about the Beltline project and in theory you support it, but you don't exactly know where the Beltline is? There's a tour for you.

• Have you driven past Rhodes Hall on Peachtree or the Castle House on 15th St. across from the Woodruff Arts Center, and wondered about the architecture and how they came to be there? There are tours for you.

• Did you know that Atlanta has a replica of Scottish poet Robert Burns' birth home and it serves as the club house for The Atlanta Burns Club? I didn't, but there's a tour for that!

• Did you go to the Georgia Capitol on a field trip as a kid, and now all you can remember about it is that there was the head of a two-headed calf in a glass jar on the third floor? Well, now you can go as an adult and learn about architecture and civil rights, because there are tours for that. (Someone please let me know if the two-headed calf is still there.)

• Do you want to see the historic home where Gerard and I had our wedding reception? There's a tour for that, too. I'm not kidding. The Wimbish House is on the list.

 My favorite tours that I've done in the past are: Fox Theatre, Oakland Cemetery, Ansley Park, and Inman Park tours. This year I'm going to try to do the Druid Hills and Beltline tours. Some of the tours do require reservations, so it's best to check the schedule in advance. If you feel strange going to one of these events by yourself, take someone with you who has lived in Atlanta five years or less and pretend like that person asked you to show them around. Just nod your head and say "that's right" like you are agreeing when the tour guide mentions an interesting fact.

The Dana Mania award goes to the comment with the most interesting/weirdest bit of Atlanta trivia. Two-headed calf in state capitol building doesn't count since it has already been mentioned.