Atlanta practicalities.

Prices in shops and on menus are shown before tax, and the tax is added at the till. The Georgia Department of Revenue publishes the combined sales tax rate for Atlanta: 8.9%, the state's 4% and the local taxes together. Hotel rooms carry lodging taxes on top of that, so the tax line on a room bill runs higher than 8.9%.

Tipping is custom, not law, and it is how service staff are paid. The usual working range in restaurants is 15 to 20 percent of the pre-tax bill for table service, a dollar or two per drink at a bar, and a few dollars for the taxi and the hotel porter. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, and MARTA takes them at the gate.

Atlanta is on Eastern Time, the same clock as New York and Washington, an hour ahead of Chicago and three ahead of the West Coast. Kickoffs, gates and parade times on this calendar are all Eastern, and the This Weekend page turns over on Eastern Time too.

Atlanta sits inland, and what reaches it from the Atlantic hurricane season, 1 June to 30 November, is the tail: the remains of Gulf and Atlantic storms arrive as days of heavy rain, in the autumn especially. The sharper risk is the summer thunderstorm, which builds fast in the heat, drops a lot of water in an hour and moves on; outdoor events pause for lightning and restart behind it. In practice: in those months, keep an eye on the forecast in the week before a big outdoor weekend, and check the event's own page on the day. Organisers here move times rather than cancel where they can, and event pages here are updated when they do.

Summer heat organises the day the way the family page puts it: the zoo, the park and the BeltLine in the morning, a museum or the Aquarium at midday, and the evening for the streets and the music. Carry water, take the shade side of the street, and let MARTA do the long legs; at $2.50 a ride with transfers included, hopping on and off is the cheap option as well as the cool one.

The legal drinking age in Georgia is 21, and bars and shops check ID, visitors included; carry photo ID you are comfortable having scanned at a door. Venues set their own door policies on top of the law, and some clubs are 21 and over for entry regardless of whether you drink.

The ordinary big-city rules apply, stated plainly: stay on lit, busy streets at night, keep the phone and wallet put away between uses, use the taxi ranks and ride apps rather than accepting rides offered at the curb, and let the hotel hold the valuables you do not need for the night. Downtown and Midtown are busy late on event nights, which is its own comfort.

For the trip in, the getting there page covers the airport train and the streetcar; for the stay itself, the hotels page compares the four areas to sleep in.