My Aunt asked me to take the MARTA (train) from the airport to her leafy suburb in the outskirts of Atlanta. "Did you feel safe?" She asked me loudly as I popped out through the gate where she patiently waited. In some ways that hour-long train ride through the city gave me more insight to Atlanta than the rest of my time spent with her. But who's to say which lifestyle is the right way to be an Atlantan?

Atlanta metropolitan area has 6.5million people within the city limits. Of all economies in the world, Atlanta is ranked 20th. It's big, it's sprawling, it's leafy and lovely. I've visited regularly since I was a child, as I grew up in the neighboring state of South Carolina. I've climbed Stone Mountain. I saw Ryan Adams at The Tabernacle. I ate at the Flying Biscuit. It's home to Coca Cola, Margaret Mitchell, Outkast and the Braves baseball.

It's a combination of cultures. When people try to tell me that the South is just a bunch of backwards rednecks, I point them to Atlanta. In 2020 Georgia became a swing state largely due to Atlanta, which, by the way, now has more black folks than white folks.

I don't talk a lot with my Aunt about politics, but I'm pretty sure she was not one of the contributors to the big blue wave. Once I get off the MARTA, she whisked me away to her immaculate townhouse. Tomorrow we will go shopping and then head to Milton's Cuisine and Cocktails for her friend's 75th birthday.

The Friday shopping session started with a quick trip to the Mexican restaurant for lunch, and a little libation was required. The medium margaritas turned out to actually be as big as my head. The shopping trip was postponed as for hours we sat, talked, laughed, drank and ate chunky spicy guacamole. My Aunt loves to take me shopping, but cocktails and her company are what I enjoy most.

We returned home to freshen up for dinner, and then suddenly I'm amongst her longtime country club friends and at least 35 years younger than everyone else at the table. For Atlanta's aforementioned diversity, you don't see much at this place, but you do get some great southern food. I opt for fried green tomatoes, stuffed with feta cheese and an Arugula and watercress salad with pickled peaches for balance. I order a "Release the Doves' to keep with the previous tequila theme. It comes with grapefruit juice, fresh lime, cane syrup, grapefruit bitters, basil and black lava salt which is so pretty on the rim of the glass.

I was seated next to a retired Delta pilot. "Delta is all I ever fly," I told him. (Atlanta is Delta's HQ.) He asked me more questions than any other American I'd ever met. He'd flown all over the world but didn't know much about Australia. He couldn't believe Australia had such a low population. The man on the other side of me was intrigued by how I even ended up in Australia.

"She reminds me of the older generation, a little bit more adventurous," he said to the other.

By the end of the night we're all at the Marriot Hotel Bar where I tried not to feel like everyone was up past their bedtime. Another woman tells me "you're an old soul, you fit right in with us," which both amuses and alarms me.

On the day that I left, I read the headlines that the city's annual Music Midtown Festival (where I saw Ben Harper and Jack Johnson play 18 years ago) was just canceled. Not because of Covid, but because the state of Georgia wouldn't give the festival a gun ban, so it was too dangerous to go ahead. It made me so sad.

I felt just fine riding the Marta Thursday evening, but I'm not naive about this place. I know the South comes with complexities and contradictions. Outside the air conditioned restaurants, in the humid summer air hangs the battle of wealth and poverty, violence and security, history and progress. The old world vs the new beginnings.