How DOES one talk about a week long vacation in less than four blog posts? I’m not going to try. So here’s the third part. It’s long, but don’t let that bother you. Plenty of pictures too!

Priceline was good to me in Chattanooga. I thought, let’s see how cheap I can get a downtown hotel. And BOOM. Got it on my first try…which actually made me sad because I should have tried cheaper, even though Priceline warned me that I was already trying to bid too low.

Here’s the best part: The hotel was the Chattanooga Choo Choo! It was an historic hotel made from converting both a train station AND a train into a hotel. The lobby of the hotel used to the be the train station and is a gorgeous dome, and the train (yes, the Chattanooga Choo Choo) was outside, with lots of cars that contained hotel rooms. Sadly, priceline did not get us one of those rooms, but there are also three other hotel buildings with regular rooms. It was amazing, and hard to describe in a way that doesn’t sound cheesy. Oh wait, it WAS cheesy, but in a fabulous 1970’s way, that made me think it would be the perfect place for a getaway for a family like say, in Don Draper’s time—several restaurants on the property, one with singing waiters and advertising an “all you can eat shrimp and salad bar”, and others that completely reminded me of places that, in my childhood, I would have thought were just amazing. Not to mention there was a pool for each hotel building, and yes, we tried out several of them. The hotel is going to be renovated, and in fact parts were in progress, and supposedly the singing restaurant will be turned into something a bit more modern (I’m disappointed we missed our chance, but there were so many more appealing places to eat, though none had an unlimited shrimp bar) and honestly, I’d totally stay there again if I were given the chance. That’s my review.

So I believe I left off with the Tennessee Aquarium, so I’ll pick up after that. We went to a great seafood place downtown called the Bluewater Grille. It was really good and we happened upon a great wine special to go with dinner. It had been nice and cool when we arrived in Chattanooga earlier, and there was a big storm during dinner, and it remained cool. Why do I mention this?

Well, the next morning…it was ridiculously hot. Hot hot hot. We’d thought we might leave for the mountains that day but were so enamored of the hotel and the town that we extended our stay, and decided to spend the day walking around seeing the sights. 

It wasn’t too bad in the shade, but it was really hot in the sun. We walked by the river a bit and made our way up a hill, and found the Art Museum.

I hadn’t felt like going the Art Museum in Nashville and wasn’t planning on this one…but we stopped in to get water, and discovered that water and bathrooms were for patrons only…and it was really nice and cold inside…and we decided that it was the perfect day to see the Hunter Art Museum. It was a nice museum, made of three connected buildings, one which was an old mansion and the other two in entirely different styles, which made for an odd building but unique.

We spent a few hours at the museum and then decided to have lunch at Big River Grille and Brewing Works. I always like to try local beers when I can (we’d had one the night before at a hilarious place called The Pickle Barrel from a different brewery). After lunch we decided to brave the heat and walk across a pedestrian bridge to the other side of the river. I should add that Louie really enjoys walking all over cities to get the feel for them, whereas I am a little more of a “let’s check the guidebook and see what’s best” and “let’s take a break at this coffee house and have a coffee” sort of person, so it was really fun and interesting combining our two styles. I maintain that eating fabulous meals and walking all over cities definitely fits together well!

On the other side of the bridge there were some more cute shops and restaurants and a nice park with a carousel and other stuff. We wandered around a bit, getting totally overheated (to the point where I insisted we go to a drugstore so I could get a gatorade because I thought I was going to pass out)…but it was nice. I just wish it had been less sunny.

Finally we decided to head back to the hotel and do some swimming to cool off and then go somewhere for dinner.

We decided to have dinner at Urban Stack Burger Lounge which was very near the hotel. It reminded me of Bailey’s Range, a local place, except BETTER! I don’t remember exactly what I ordered (gosh, this is why you should write stuff down right away) but we definitely split an order of pickled vegetables, which was delightful. I recall saying that we needed to try to pickle cauliflower in the future, and Louie suggesting that while it was neat to eat, it was probably a terrible idea to try that at home. I don’t know how involved the process of pickling cauliflower would be, but I suppose it’s easier to steam or roast it.

We finished the night at the Terminal Brewhouse, also right near the hotel. I like hoppy IPA’s and am generally pretty happy just drinking that. So I was pretty happy.

Okay, the next morning we had one more thing to do in Chattanooga, and that was something that had been advertised everywhere. See Rock City.

Here’s the thing: there were tons of billboards about Rock City, and how there were amazing views and you could see 7 states, and all this. So with that and my friend April’s recommendation, we decided to shell out $19.95 each for the views. It was up on Lookout Mountain which is a nice drive up.

We were enjoying the nature…and then we realized that the bird sounds we were hearing were NOT actual bird sounds, but piped in bird sounds.

I began to suspect something strange was happening.

But we kept going as if this was just a lovely nature site full of natural sights.

And obviously, looking at my pictures, no, this isn’t entirely natural.

But then, we took a little detour and we saw a gnome looking rock with a pipe.

There was a sign saying that the original path in Rock City in the 1930’s went by this (yes, a rock, it looks like a witch…IF we put a pipe in the mouth!) and then a new path diverted and for decades no one saw it. Here’s the thing, I LOVE this stuff. I love thinking about how people used to live, particularly in, say, the 1900’s through 1940’s. I don’t know why, but I am a sucker for seeing stuff about that time period. In fact, anything during the 1900’s is pretty fascinating for me. So I loved seeing this, and thinking about people going on vacations, just like we were, and seeing this kind of stuff.

Now, the next bit, unfortunately, my pictures just aren’t good.  We entered a cave called FairyTale Caverns, which was damp, dark, and cool…and full of scenes of various characters from stories and nursery rhymes plus more gnomes, under black light. It was so totally unexpected and odd and I LOVED IT.

My pictures didn’t turn out very well overall, so I’ll just beseech you to GO TO ROCK CITY YOURSELF.

After we left, still shocked by everything we had seen, I did some online research on the place. It has a fascinating history!

This is a great article about the history of Rock City. Here’s another great summary of a visit to Rock City. “Where was I? What was that?”

One more post to go: Mountains, camping, and bears! Coming soon!

Okay, so I left off with the idea that I was done talking about Nashville, but I forgot about Cheekwood Gardens! We stopped by Cheekwood Gardens on our way out of town. It was a hot day, but nice enough to walk around a bit outside.

Interesting fact, particularly since I was staying (do I always say we or just I? Am I entirely too used to saying we all the time? Do I lack individuality or am I using the royal we?) at the Maxwell House Hotel: The gardens were donated as part of the former estate of one of the owners of Maxwell House Coffee. As the docent at the museum said, “This is the house that coffee built. Maxwell House Coffee.”

The mansion was there but had mostly been renovated into a museum. There was a neat exhibit on Andy Warhol and his flower drawings and other information about him. Never stop learning!

After the gardens it was time to go to Franklin for lunch. We’d decided to try a place there (south of Nashville, advertised as a quaint historic town, yada yada) called Grey’s on Main. It did not disappoint! We walked around the town a bit after lunch in search of a coffee while I sweated profusely. I did learn on this trip that I sweat a lot. I’m assuming it’s because I’m in such great shape, but still. It’s pretty ridiculous to feel one can never wear normal clothing and should always be wearing tech clothing and workout attire, and perhaps should change clothes several times a day.

After lunch we were off to Chattanooga. The plan was to get there and visit the Tennessee Aquarium before it closed. We managed to accomplish this, but barely as we didn’t realize that we were heading from Central to Eastern Time! The Aquarium was really cool in all senses of the word. I didn’t take as many pictures inside because it was dark, but the set up was terrific—two buildings and the path just flowed from one exhibit to the next so you really got to see everything without worrying about going into separate halls or backtracking. It was pretty empty too since we were there towards the end of the day and overall was one of my favorite things! Admission wasn’t cheap (I think around $25) but it was a really nice way to spend a few hours and was really well done. I’d only been to one other Aquarium, in Chicago, and I preferred this one.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to break these posts up so much, but I think it’s better for me to publish a short post now rather than wait until I have the time for a long one. I find myself so short on time with the usual constant feeling of being behind, and vacation recap blog posts are no exception, BUT I really want to write about it so I can at least look back later. I keep thinking of a million things I want to say on the blog while I’m driving around or doing other stuff, but then I end up doing other stuff, mostly mundane, or practicing (SO many upcoming performances, including a recital that involves solo Bach!—and I need to blog about it too so you local readers can attend)—but that’s life. It just stays busy, and mostly that’s great. I feel so much less stressed after vacation, simply busy in a good way. With that thought, I’m off to get ready for a wedding gig, and our next installment (see what I did there?) will be about Chattanooga and more of my trip.

So last week I did something fun I hadn’t done in awhile. I took an honest to goodness vacation! The boy and I decided to take a road trip from St Louis, and we had in mind to go to Tennessee, specifically—Nashville, Chattanooga, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and hoped to get as far as Asheville. We didn’t make it that far because we kept staying at each place longer than we’d thought we might, but it was a great trip and it was so much fun to get out of town and explore!

Highlights from the first few days:

Why yes, that’s “tamales” and chili. An odd choice perhaps but it seemed to be what the restaurant specialized in. Note to travelers, Paducah is a cute place, but there is very little open on Sunday afternoon.

As we left, knowing we wanted to get to Nashville before too late, I remarked that we surely could have spent another hour walking around to see more of the sights.

Note to travelers: The Priceline app is pretty good, and unlike online where (at least in the past) you couldn’t bid again without changing something other than the price (i.e. geographical location or star rating) you could just start low and keep bidding. We got a “downtown” hotel for a decent price, and ended up staying at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel. Which isn’t downtown, but had a shuttle that would drop you off there. It was a nice hotel though.

We braved our fear of honky tonk and country music and visited a few places in the “District” which was full of tourists, which we figured included us. The musicians were all fantastic—that’s the thing about Nashville, all the musicians are great, even if you don’t like their style of music.

The other thing about Nashville is that there is a lot more to see than we thought! We wandered around the farmer’s market (open everyday) and downtown, looking at various sites. The Bicentennial Mall was really cool and there was a ton of steps up to the Capitol Building, which of course I wanted to climb since I’m such a tremendous athlete.

We learned over the course of our days there that the coffee is named after the hotel.

We also visited Centennial Park, where the World’s Fair was held in 1897. They decided to build a replica of the Parthenon for the event, and after the fact couldn’t bear to tear it down. Since it was made of temporary materials it did start to crumble and they decided to rebuild it. That’s what you see up in the pictures. And then they made a replica of the giant Athena statue. It was odd, surreal, strange, but pretty cool.

Our last night in Nashville we had to relocate hotels since the rate on ours skyrocketed or wasn’t even available (not entirely sure)…it turns out that there was a “New Direction” concert and all the downtown hotels were either booked up or ridiculously expensive. We moved to an amazing (by that I mean, cheap, kinda awful, but not as bad as it could have been) Rodeway Motel a few miles north of the city. We decided to get a REALLY nice meal at a wonderful place called the Silly Goose, and it didn’t disappoint. I don’t seem to have taken pictures, but the food was amazing.

Next: onto Chattanooga. (Traveling is fun. I missed it.)

I’ve driven a variety of cars over the years.  Some were based on getting a really good deal, others were based more on appearance and the “cute factor”.  In high school I drove an ’88 Oldsmobile Calais.  I believe I got the car at 180,000 miles and it already barely worked.  It was a car though, and I was 16, and for even more fun, it was a manual transmission which meant that I had to learn quickly how to drive a stick shift.  Since I had just recently learned how to drive, neither me nor my father really wanted to go through the trauma of learning something else together, so he just gave me a crash course in how to drive one (and what I mean by that is, he literally DESCRIBED to me how to drive a stick shift) and then I was on my own.  I never did learn how to start on a hill and I quickly learned the least hilly routes to drive around town to get places.  (This would come in handy as a runner as well, I think.)

(It looked much like this)

After that my next car was a brief lived stint with a Chevrolet Celebrity which had belonged to my grandmother.  I drove this car for a summer and then about a month in Cleveland until it got stolen from near my apartment overnight.  It was recovered, but totaled.  They had taken all of the wheels off among other things.  I had to go pick up a few personal belongings from it at the salvage lot, and I recall it was a rainy day and the lot was very muddy.  My poor car was hard to find because it was on it’s belly in the mud, sinking it.  Literally, the WHEELS were gone.  I do not mean simply tires.

Next my dad found a wonderful Toyota Camry for me to drive.  I got this one in the low 100,000s I believe, and I think I had either just hit 200,000 miles or was about to (I unfortunately can’t recall—if only I’d had a blog then).  This car lasted until a flash flood in Charlotte—I was out of town at a friend’s wedding and had left my car at home.  My cat sitter (another friend) called me afterwards to tell me my car had been submerged in water for several hours.  I called the insurance company to tell them my car had been in a flood, and they asked “is there anyone inside?”  Um, no.  I’d be calling 911.  To be fair…not everybody would.  The sight of my car being towed away with water pouring out of it was a sad sight.

I could keep going—Buick Regal, VW Jetta (another manual transmission which I learned to drive a little bit better than the Calais, and I allude to a strange story about it in this post), and currently I drive a Ford Focus.

But what sort of car would I want if I could get anything?  I like small cars, and I like good gas mileage.  When I bought the Focus I was into the Focus hatchback and the Toyota Yaris.  The Focus I ended up with was again, a good deal (I am and will probably always be, a used car sort of person).

When I went to Italy in 2001 I was obsessed with the smart car—we saw them everywhere—I loved how tiny they were and how easy to park and maneuver.  I also loved that they seemed to come from car vending machines.

I didn’t realize that they are owned by Mercedes Benz now.  You can find a smart car dealer here if you aren’t familiar with them—I definitely see more around the US than before but we are such a “big car” country that’s it still pretty unusual.  If I lived in a city and only needed it to get around or perhaps as a second car, I would love one.  I think it would be really handy! (Blog readers, please send me a free car!)

What’s your favorite car?  What do you drive?  Do you know how to drive a manual transmission?