Atlanta Ice Cream Festival 2017

This summer has been a busy one, but as I mentioned in this recent post, there are plenty of fun ways to get outside for some much-needed R & R. For example, a couple of weekends ago was the 7th annual Atlanta Ice Cream Festival in Piedmont Park! I attended the festival last year, and this year seemed even bigger than before.

There is no cost to attend the festival, and you can pick and choose which vendors you’d like to purchase ice cream and other treats from. In addition to their ice cream-eating contest, the Atlanta Ice Cream Festival also has a host of other activities, including dance and yoga. There are also neat games and giveaways (I ended up with a Greyhound bus t-shirt)!

In addition to the delicious ice creams and frozen custards, there was also a really neat old-fashioned soda bar called the Six Shooter Saloon. You bought your mug, and you could try the different types of old-timey sodas- my favorite was birch beer, which is very similar to root beer! Plus, you get a neat mug to take home as a souvenir.

My biggest pieces of advice for the ice cream festival: wear sunscreen, bring a water bottle, and carry an umbrella. It was stiflingly hot during this year’s festival, and as much as I love ice cream and soda, they aren’t good for keeping you hydrated. Since it was bright and sunny when we headed to the festival, we didn’t bring an umbrella, and we proceeded to get completely soaked through when the torrential downpour hit in the afternoon (you’d think I would have learned my lesson about sudden afternoon showers by now).