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?

My parents have always emphasized the importance of getting out there and seeing the world.  I grew up in South Carolina, but my grandparents lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania and we were often driving up to visit.  Along the way we’d stop in Virginia or other places to visit other family members, or we’d go to Philadelphia or New York City with our family in Pennsylvania.

We also spent a lot of time exploring our home state of South Carolina.  We’d drive to the beach for a weekend, or to nearby historical or ecological places of interest like Chimney Rock, Cowpens, or the Riverbanks Zoo for a day trip or a weekend camping trip.  In the summer we’d take longer trips, to the Grand Canyon, or to California and Banff, or to the Great Lakes.  I learned that there was a whole world out there and it was important to explore it and learn as much as you could about it.

As a family of five or six (the sixth came later), the best way to see the world was to drive there.  If we stayed overnight somewhere, we generally camped.  We’d load up the car with the tent, sleeping bags, suitcases, camp stove, bug spray, water bottles, and bags of books, and off we’d go.  My mother would encourage us to keep journals on the longer trips (some of which are still CLASSIC reading when we visit—I’d say my early journals were the precursors to this blog, in fact, I was perhaps the first Healthy Living Blogger as I’d generally document every meal!).

As I grew older I continued traveling though often the reasons were different.  I’d travel for music festivals, to Colorado, to Europe, to small towns in Ohio.  I’d travel to visit Chris in Miami, Cleveland, and San Diego.  I’d travel for auditions for orchestras—to Houston, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh.

And sometimes I’d get to travel for fun.  One of my favorite relaxing vacations is going on cruises (like for our honeymoon, and the summer before that, and Chris recently suggested we might want a cruise this summer).  There’s just something about being somewhere warm, eating a ton and lying around drinking pina coladas to your heart’s content.  Though going to Paris was amazing as well—tons of sightseeing and walking around, yet still eating a ton and drinking wine to our heart’s content.  (You see a theme here, right?  This is why I’m fat…)

If you read my blog regularly you probably notice I do tend to get to travel a lot.  I’ve got another trip to Phoenix coming up soon, and we just got back from Chicago.  After that I actually don’t have anything planned until the summer though.  Summer plans so far definitely include a trip to Long Island for my sister-in-law’s wedding and possibly another wedding or two. 

We’ve also tossed out the possibility of a cruise (There’s a great guide in the New York Times about cruising)—I’d love to do an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle, because that would be all-new to us– or you could visit a “sleeper city” like St Louis for fairly cheap (I love that Phoenix is also on that list!)  If you are ready to book your vacation you can go here for airfare, hotels, and rental cars.  There are also more articles about various destinations.  I love reading about the travel possibilities and dreaming about my next trip…almost as much as I enjoy taking the trip!  (I also love writing about it later and reliving the experience while looking at my pictures.  To me this is all part of the travel experience.)

Where do you want to go?