Travel

Quick Trip to Chattanooga and Nashville

Since we didn’t get to see my parents on Thanksgiving (thanks COVID!) we wanted to try to get together over Spring Break. We met in the middle in Chattanooga.

We rented a lovely Airbnb. I didn’t get any pictures but it was this one and it was very nice, just like you would expect from the pictures. It was easy to find and easy to get around from it.

The first night after we arrived we went to walk around downtown. This wasn’t actually the best idea, but it wasn’t the worst either. We may have picked a less interesting area to walk through, and we got to say hello to a variety of homeless people. We worked up an appetite but nothing we saw appealed, so Louie found a place to drive to, and we enjoyed it. It was called Sluggo’s and served all vegan food. We ate on the balcony and it was a lovely night.

We all sat on the couch and started watching Killers of the Flower Moon after that. It is the world’s longest movie, so we watched a little more than half before turning in for the night.

The next day the weather was nice and sunny so we opted for more outdoor activities. We got tickets for the Incline Railway and headed out. One thing to note about Chattanooga is that all the places you go require you to pay for parking. I used the Parkmobile app since I use it here and it was already set up for our car and everything. It was a little annoying to get to a large parking lot where we paid for tickets and to have to pay again for parking, but thankfully it was only a few dollars. But I digress.

The Incline Railroad goes up the mountain about a mile. It is at an incline, some places more than others. When you get on you are leaning back a little bit but at the top it is much steeper.

We enjoyed the ride up and there is a lot to see at the top: there are two different viewing platforms, a place to see the machinery and some museum like signs, and of course a gift shop. You can’t leave the little station though, even though you can see some nice grassy areas, you can’t get to them.

After we rode back down we were hungry, so we looked on google and there was a restaurant right nearby with high ratings, so we headed out. The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe was a hit with us, and we would recommend it. I ordered the Rainbow Sandwich because it seemed unique, and it was! I enjoyed it, though I’m not sure that putting chicken salad, cucumber salad, and pimento cheese salad today is better than eating either one of those things separately.

It may look large here in the picture, but it was just slightly smaller than a normal slice of bread, since they cut the crusts off. It was perfect though.

After lunch we had considered going to Ruby Falls, another tourist place, but we decided to just drive around instead. We drove up Lookout Mountain and stopped a few places to walk around and take looks: one place was a college with a lovely grounds and some nice views, and another just on the side of the road. We also stopped at a NPS site called Craven’s House which was part of a Civil War battle at one time.

We stopped by the old Chattanooga Choo Choo building where Louie and I had stayed some time ago –it had been completely changed and was now restaurants and a boutique hotel out back.

Still had the train though!

After a few hours of sightseeing, we were all ready to go back to relax at home for a bit.

We refreshed and then headed out to dinner. My dad loves german food so he found a place called the Brew Haus. It was a nice place to have dinner and had a terrific soft pretzel! We shared that and then each had our individual meals as well. We ended up participating in a little bit of trivia at the place as well, which was a new experience for my parents. After dinner we realized we were right by the Walnut Street Pedestrian bridge, so we walked up over the river a bit and enjoyed the start of the sunset.

After dinner we went back and finished the movie (Killers of the Flower Moon) from the night before. It was good, though it definitely could had been shorter.

The next morning after breakfast my parents headed home. It was raining and they were worried about the drive. It was great to see them and very enjoyable to spend a few days together! Louie and I had decided to stop in Nashville on our way home, so we didn’t head out yet as we didn’t have our hotel there until later. We visited the Museum of Towing and Recovery.

The museum covered the history of the tow truck, which was invented in Chattanooga. It was really interesting–both from an engineering standpoint for Louie and for me: I enjoy seeing old cars and such. One of the tow trucks you were allowed to get into, so we did. I am unsure why it is so small!

After that it was lunchtime, so we got some tacos at Taqueria Jalisco Ania and then coffee at nearby Velo Roasters. We headed to Nashville after that.

We made a quick stop at Stones River National Battlefield en route, but didn’t stay long: we saw the movie and museum, but their bathrooms weren’t functioning and you had to use porta potties and this made me grumpy. We decided just to go to the hotel at this point, so we checked in and relaxed a bit. We stayed at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel, which we stayed at before: nice location not too far from downtown (an easy lyft) but it was a little run down and in need of some updating. It was fine though, and I don’t regret it. We had dinner at Husk: we’d eaten at the two other Husk restaurants (in Savannah and Charleston) and figured to go for the trifecta. It was delicious.

Trout with grits–not a super photogenic picture, but my mouth is still watering.

After dinner we walked down to Broadway to check out the scene. It was a mass of humanity! We walked a bit, and then popped into a bar and got beers and listened to a bar play some music, including Freebird, which one guy tipped them $100 to play.

We decided we’d had enough of crowds then and headed a few blocks away, where the streets completely empty out (like, where does everybody even come from?) and enjoyed more music at a bar called “Loser’s” before calling it a night. I get tired early due to years of teaching early morning classes, so we didn’t make it much past 11.

The view of downtown from the hotel window, very nice!

The next morning we packed up and headed out for brunch at Audrey’s. We ate, took a short walk around to move a bit before getting in the car, and then we hit the road for home. It was a lovely but short trip, and I’m so glad we did it!

A mural near the restaurant.

Random thoughts

Almost Spring Break

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Spring Break isn’t really a thing that adults have, but I sort of have one. This coming week the college is off and the following week the before-school school is off and so I get some days off (with some finagling of my private students and careful guardianship of my days and having to say no to things.) Anyway, so I’m really looking forward to having some downtime and doing a little trip which I’ll tell you about later.

We’ve been pretty busy here, though not overwhelming. I was going to take a local audition here but it got canceled so I’ve been a little lazy with practicing outside of being ready for various gigs (one of which takes up quite a bit of today.) I had been having some buzzing on my violin since…all winter?…and I found a time to take it in. It turns out there was a small crack and then some open seams, and at one point my luthier sent this picture.

But I have it back now and it is sounding much better!

I say we are busy, but it’s really just normal stuff lately. We did see a concert last Sunday night as part of the Great Artists Series at Wash U–Tafelmusik, which was really terrific. I have to say, the GAS has been pretty intense this year: 5 concerts in 3 months I think. But it’s all been really high quality and terrific stuff and I’m glad we are subscribers.

Friday night we went out to dinner at Lily’s, our favorite family owned mexican restaurant, and inadvertently just beat the rush: evidently they’ve been swamped all month due to a social media post. Which is great for them but less great for us, haha. After that we needed to watch a movie for the film club we belong to, so we watched All of Us Strangers, which was very thought provoking though we both had trouble keeping our eyes open.

Yesterday we went out for a late morning walk and ended up deciding to get brunch at Winslow’s which is a nice 30 minute walk from here. I had a gig after that downtown at the Hyatt, and snapped this nice picture of the Arch.

It’s just on the other side of the highway.

After the gig we went to see the Arianna String Quartet play with the Kyo-Shin-An Arts at the Touhill Theater at UMSL. I really enjoyed the concert! We came home and watched an episode of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which we started a few nights ago, it is not great, and might actually be terrible, but it’s entertaining enough) and then went to bed early to prepare for the time change, haha.

My neighbors’ tree looks so pretty out the window of my teaching studio.

I’m deep in planning mode right now, trying to work out the summer plans. We have a big trip planned in the late summer and a small trip in May. We plan to visit my sister’s family in Chautauqua at some point, and I have some interesting work things that I’ll find out about for sure next week. I don’t know if it seems early or late for you at this point: do you have your summer travel plans set or does it seem way too early? I find people are in one mind or the other, but I got asked to play a concert in February 2025 the other day, so it’s just how my schedule operates. This job requires advance planning and so many details!

Miles has been using this one part of the cat tree that he never did before. It’s always exciting when they do something new! I wonder how they decide these things. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be a cat for a day, or an hour, just to learn how they think?

Goals

In like a lion?

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Can you believe it is March already?? I feel like February flew by, but that’s because it was a short and busy month, I suppose. And the weather has been so crazy, warm, snowstorm, warm, cold, warm, etc. Let’s see what March does with the weather!

It ended up being a little longer than I thought since my last blog. I have really been trying to post at least once a week, and we are a little past that, so I have more to share with you.

I got my Mom’s Storyworth book yesterday: last year we gave her a subscription to Storyworth, and if you have a parent or grandparent who likes to write and enjoys looking back on their life, this is a fantastic thing! If they don’t like to write, you will likely have less success. Mom enjoyed writing stories, editing them, and adding pictures all year long. You use the questions Storyworth recommends or add your own, and people can read it along the way as well (if you want them too.) We have really enjoyed reading the stories all year long and I’m thrilled to have this tangible book to look at whenever I want.

Since we left off with my last blog post, Louie and I have gone to a number of events. One of our favorites was seeing the play Moby Dick at the Repertory Theater of St Louis. Neither of us has read Moby Dick, so we hoped that it was still a good idea to see the play. We weren’t wrong! We had great seats (cheaper than opera for sure) and really enjoyed the entire production. The actors climbed all over the set, way up high sometimes, and there were cool effects with flowing cloth to represent the water. There was a time near the end when there was a tidal wave and two of the actors ran up parallel aisles bringing a giant cloth over our entire audience section and it was very effective! Every time we go to see a play we want to see more, but it’s somehow harder to fit into our schedules than concerts are. I think I feel like spending the money for concerts is work related, which is just silly, because I don’t need to worry about that all the time.

The set at the beginning of the show.

We also went to see Brahms X Radiohead at the St Louis Symphony, which was a mashup of Brahms Symphony no. 1 and Radiohead’s Ok Computer. It was definitely an interesting idea, and while I’m not sure whether I liked it, I’m glad we went.

The cats have been enjoying the sun. They also love when the radiators are hot. With the weather being warmer, there tends to be more sun but less hot radiators, so they probably don’t quite understand what is going on. Life continues nonetheless.

Sometimes Muriel looks very cute. Other times she hisses at my students when they come in!

I’ve been doing the usual teaching with a few extra concerts dotted in recently. The quartet played for a Lent concert, I played for a choir concert and at a church. This weekend is gig free, but tomorrow afternoon is Festival of Strings at my school job, which means an afternoon spent tuning violins and violas, wrangling cats, I mean 4th graders, and watching a whole bunch of kids play together, which is always fun to see!

Yesterday I went to the Art Museum’s Art in Bloom event with my friend Manuela. I had not been before and didn’t know what to expect: it was a bunch of different flower arrangements placed around the museum. Each one was inspired by a different piece of art. We had a good time trying to get pictures and see how the flowers and the original artwork coordinated.

It was pretty crowded there, and we were there Friday morning. I suspect today will be even busier.

And then last night we went to a wine dinner at the Whittemore House. It was “women in wine” and all the wine makers were women as well, which was a lovely change. We had a nice meal, learned a bit, and enjoyed the company of our friends. (That sounds weird, but it was a wine dinner, so I need to write more formally.)

Since it’s the end of the month I should also report on some of my yearly goals.

February goals, revisited: I decided not to worry about the baking challenge this month: I didn’t have much time but also didn’t want to make a fancy dessert for just Louie and I and just wasn’t feeling inspired. I also decided not to make marmalade this year but make a note for next year. We didn’t get a hike in but got quite a few long walks. We had a dinner party and I had several lunches with friends. I continued to floss and do my Duolingo every day, got some good workouts in and ate relatively well. (I could do better with those last two.)

We attended Film Club and I attended Book Club and enjoyed both of those. I think my attitude stayed PRETTY good as far as FOMO and I have also started sharing my thoughts with friends more which has also helped (funny how getting out of your own head helps so much, hmm?) We also made progress towards our summer vacation plans.

March goals: Keep up the personal goals: good diet, exercise, hiking, lunches with friends, flossing, duolingo, book and movie clubs.

Enjoy a lovely trip to Chattanooga with my parents and Louie. Have a relaxing few days of Spring Break.

Get my taxes done. Spend at least a few hours dealing with the boxes in the garage and do some yard work as well. Stay on top of all my paperwork and admin/emails, etc.

I may do some baking: perhaps, either the month’s baking challenge or a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Well, there you have it. March looks like it should be a nice month?

Random thoughts

Tuesday Thoughts

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I almost titled this Monday Musings, but then I remembered it was Tuesday! I didn’t have my school class yesterday because of Presidents Day so it sort of felt like a Monday today.

We attended the Doos Trio concert last night at Washington University and it was fantastic! Here is the description from the website: Three masters and old friends join together in a new collaboration. Kayhan Kalhor, Wu Man, and Sandeep Das are established soloists in their individual traditions. Their new trio highlights the ancient traditions of Iran, China and India in a 21st century program. Three-time GRAMMY nominee Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso on the kamancheh, who through his many musical collaborations has been instrumental in popularizing Persian music in the West. Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. A Guggenheim Fellow and GRAMMY-winning musician, Sandeep Das is one of the leading tabla virtuosos in the world today. Since his debut concert at the age of 17 with legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, Das has built a prolific international reputation spanning over three decades.

Things that I loved: how much FUN the musicians were having playing together (AND it sounded great), and how interesting it was to watch Kayhan Kalhor play the kamancheh, which seems like a precursor to the violin. I just really loved the concert, and wanted to get up on stage and improvise with them. It seemed they had some things that were set (endings for sure) and other things that were improvised, and that is exactly the sort of thing I was teaching in Creative Ability Development before scheduling got the best of us. I think so much of jazz improvisation has more rules than I want to deal with and I prefer improvising in a more free way and just having fun with it. This doesn’t mean that an auditorium of people will enjoy listening to me improvise, but the fun of it is the same. So much of music should be more focused on how fun it is to PLAY and not so worried about the audience and what the audience thinks. We tell kids not to worry about what other people think, and then we tell them they have to perform in certain ways so the audience likes it, and that certainly seems like a mixed message!

I made bread in my bread machine on Sunday. I rarely do this, and yet the bread is always so delicious. In this case, the bread was also really tall: I made a “large” loaf, forgetting that usually I prefer the “medium” size as it is not quite so tall.

Muriel was being adorable in my chair here. I took a series of photos as she kept changing position.

She was trying to set a trap with her belly, but I don’t think petting her was a wise move at the time.

After Friday’s snowstorm, the weather yesterday and today seems quite lovely. Most of the snow is gone, though not all, and I took my coat off this morning while running errands. February is always a crazy month with the weather.

Louie has come around and decided he does like the look of the fake plants in the sunroom. I find this is often the case with him: he is hesitant to trust my ideas with decorated, but then once I set it up (after convincing him to just let me try things out) he tends to come around. This gives me the thought that I have a good eye for decorating, which may not be true, but I do know what I like to look at. I’m considering some other decorating changes and trying to decide whether to just pull the trigger or wait longer and keep looking around (likely).

How’s your week going? Do you have snow on the ground where you live?

Random thoughts

Surprise Snow Day

Yesterday we had a bit of a surprise snow day–the weather people had predicted an inch or so, and nobody believed them anyway because it had been so warm. Snow started falling around 10:30 am, and by the afternoon it looked like this.

I think we had 3-4 inches! There were definitely some times the roads got bad, but luckily I was just up at Wash U which is just a few minutes drive (it’s walkable, but I often drive when I’m teaching to save time and also because carrying all my teaching stuff makes the walk awkward.) I enjoyed getting a taste of snow driving on my way home! I was supposed to play in a small concert that evening and it got canceled, so Louie and I went to a nearby restaurant for dinner and then watched Caddyshack (he had never seen it! so we had to watch) and started watching the show Bodies. We have also been watching Fisk this week, which is hilarious.

I did a little decorating in my “sunroom” this past week: it is a waiting area for students primarily, and I recently acquired a second comfy chair for it, so we finally set up a little corner conversation area and I added some artificial trees. Louie suggested that artificial trees weren’t an improvement over no trees, but I am not sure I agree. What do you think about fake plants? We may try our hand at a real plant or two as well, but it’s one more thing to do, you know?

The room still needs some new paint, but that’s on the list. And I will get a different plant pot for the plant, the box is temporary.

Muriel loves the fake plants and knocked one of them over last night…

And Miles is mostly just content to lie in his hammock on sunny days.

Other than the snow, this week has been busy but uneventful. I know it’s bad to be busy, but it seems unavoidable. I also didn’t feel at all well one day (sort of two, some odd stomach issues) but I’m feeling better now. We had a low key Valentine’s Day and had a takeout meal from the Whittemore House. I got my students signed up for the Music Club Spring Festival, which is always a THING and I’m glad to have that done and now they just have to finish learning their assigned pieces. I’m playing a concert tomorrow night with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis (NOT to be confused with the Metropolitan Orchestra as it was at a recent performance), and today we have rehearsal. I taught many students, missed a few, have some today (sadly) and then tonight we are going to the symphony to see a variety of pieces including Carmina Burana. I did get Friday morning off from my school job (this coming Monday as well) so I am slightly more rested than usual.

Anyway, I’d better get going to my rehearsal and not fritter my whole morning away drinking coffee and typing, so I’m off. It’s sunny but cold today so the snow will likely stick around for the most part.

Random thoughts

Sunny days

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I’m nearly to my first weekend post Funny Girl and it’s going to be great! We are having some friends over for dinner on Saturday night–doing our go to of fish tacos, since we haven’t made them yet for these particular friends, so it should be low stress and fun. Sunday we have a short quartet concert in the afternoon and then I know Sunday night for many is the Super Bowl, but we aren’t big football fans here, so it’ll probably be dinner and watching something on Netflix. We started Griselda the other day so maybe that if we haven’t finished it yet.

It’s been a good week overall. I had an orchestra rehearsal last night for a group I play with: we are doing Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream along with some other stuff, and it was fun to play in a big group. My real love is orchestral playing, and I rarely get to do it, so it’s always nice.

The weather this week has been mild and lovely, and either we are going to seriously regret this in the summer, or it’s a nice respite, and I guess I’m saying nice weather in early February makes me a little nervous, but I’m still trying to appreciate it. If it hangs around for Saturday we’ll get out for a hike or trek in the park or something at least.

I haven’t been taking any interesting photos, sorry, so assume my cats are doing cute things. Miles has become more friendly and has started coming out to say hello to some of the students, which is a truly astounding thing: he has been so shy and his typical MO is to hide, so coming out to say hello is really exciting for everybody!

We had a meeting of the neighborhood movie club this week. Due to my schedule being tight, we attended on Zoom, which wasn’t as fun but it was less stressful and we enjoyed discussing Godzilla Minus One (perhaps a strange movie for a movie club, you might think, but it was really good with many layers and things to discuss.) It’s fun to have a little group, even though we are the youngest in the group…we won’t always be the youngest, so it’s probably fine to still be in that number.

How are you doing? Does nice weather make you nervous for the future? Any big plans for Valentine’s Day?

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.