A Few Days In Chattanooga

I feel like my posting has been so sporadic and a bit all over the place. I guess it has been that way because that is how I have been. Ha!! This past week was another crazy one. But then they all are it seems like. I spent the first part of last week in Chattanooga and got back home on Wednesday night. And then did a wedding cake over the weekend with a young couple I work with. Here is a recap of Chattanooga and I will share the cake with you on Friday. Well not the actual cake but you know what I mean.

After our meeting on Monday we met in front of the hotel and car pooled down to the Chattanooga Whiskey Distillery. We had a tour of the distillery and met with the owner and learned about some of their marketing strategies. Ummm we also had a couple of tiny samples. http://www.chattanoogawhiskey.com

***This may look yucky but it produces some amazing whiskey.***

Later that night we walked to dinner, it was just a short distance from the hotel, I think I mentioned in a previous post we stayed at Hotel Indigo. It was very nice and located within walking distance of lots of things. Back to the restaurant. We ate at Easy Bistro. The food here is served family style but it was very different. I tried the Octopus, I was not impressed. We also had a whole roasted fish. I think one per four people. It was tasty. The dessert was yummy. http://www.easybistro.com Check out the menu and the restaurant.

The next morning we took a CARTA bus to The Tennessee Valley Railroad. We had breakfast there in their newly opened tea room. It is adorable and the food is amazing.

***As we were riding the train our conductor gave us a brief history of the railroad and Chattanooga.***

http://www.tvrail.http://www.tvrail.comcom. (Tennessee Vally Railroad)

Next we rode the Incline Railway up Lookout Mountain. The incline railway follows a one mile track straight up Lookout Mountain. Once you are at the top the views are amazing. There are microbreweries, fresh fudge, an indoor climbing wall and lots of other fun things to do. Once you are at the top of the mountain you are on the Rock City side of the mountain.

http://www.ridetheincline.com

If you haven’t been to Rock City you have to go and check it out. Rock City gardens has over 400 different plant species, a panoramic view where you can actually see seven states, several regional gift shops and a wonderful restaurant called Big Rock Grill. While you’re there be sure to stop in and see Fairly Land Caverns and Mother Goose Village. http://www.seerockcity.com

We also toured Ruby Falls. I have been to Ruby Falls many times and I love it so much. Here you actually descend 260 feet underground by elevator. Once underground the cave system is covered with some of the most beautiful active formations I have ever seen. Ruby Falls is the tallest underground waterfall open to the public. Although there are different colored lights on the waterfall the name Ruby Falls comes from the man who discovered the cave and the falls, Leo Lambert. His wife was named Ruby. He discovered the cave in 1928. There is such wonderful history to this cave. And the waterfall is just breathtaking. http://www.rubyfalls.com

After visiting Ruby Falls and the tree houses at Ruby, I’ll tell you more about those in another post. We went back to the hotel for a quick refresh. We then took the CARTA bus downtown close to the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge. The bridge was built in 1890 and is 2,376 feet long. There is no traffic on this bridge other than bicycles, Segways or scooters. And many many people walk across the bridge. The scenery is beautiful.

Once we crossed the bridge we had dinner at Frazier Five and Dime. It was so yummy and luckily we walked all the way back to the hotel I needed it after all the calories we had. I had the Cajun shrimp with a cheddar biscuit and the trout fritters. http://www.frazier5and10.com

View from The Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge

Vendors were selling balloons on the bridge

We got back to the hotel around 10:30 PM. It was a long but fun day. According to my watch about 16,000 steps.

The next morning our meeting started early and we were out by noon. It took me about an hour and a half to get back into town. I stopped in at work for just a little while and then went home to hubs and the fur babies. Wow!!! I love traveling but I am always glad to get back to my own bed.

I hope you enjoyed this short trip to Chattanooga and if you ever get to this part of Tennessee be sure to visit some of these wonderful places. You will not be disappointed. For more information about Chattanooga visit: http://www.visitchattanooga.com

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

Hello Monday, Scandinavian Vacation, First Stop Copenhagen

Hello friends, Happy Monday, Labor Day, and September. Sorry for the long silence on the blog. I have been traveling with my husband and nephew. We visited Northern Europe and just got back this past week. We visited five countries, well six if you count the Netherlands but we were only there during our brief stop in Amsterdam. Each country is so unique I will share them with you in separate posts. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. This is how it went down.

A little more than two weeks ago we left for a long trip to Northern Europe. Our first stop was Copenhagen Denmark. We have been planning this trip since before Covid was a thing. As you know any big trip like this requires so much planning and preparing. For some reason I think as women we get the brunt of this. Before leaving I planned for who would be at the house taking care of the babies and when everyone would be there. I made sure my mother in law was taken care of and would be checked on while we were gone. And that any supplies she needed would be gotten for her. I bought all of the necessary items we needed to take with us, although my husband did buy a few electronic gadgets we needed. Secretly he loves that.

I packed and packed and cleaned because I can’t leave my house dirty when people are going to be there. I caught up on everything at work and felt like I could be gone for a couple of weeks. And we were ready. Oh and my husband packed his suitcase.

We flew out of Knoxville to Atlanta and then to Amsterdam where we would take a shorter flight into Copenhagen. The flights over were very uneventful and all of our luggage made it through. Little did we know we wouldn’t be as lucky on the return flight.

I loved that the Amsterdam airport had this fresh flower market. The tulips were just beautiful.

Also lots of fresh meats and cheeses at the airport. That is not something we see a lot of in the U.S.

Look how tiny our room was. This was in Copenhagen at The Scandic Spectrum Hotel. Other than a small bathroom this was the size of the room. We were there for three days and fortunately didn’t spend a lot of time in the room.

I am always blown away by the amount of food that is on the breakfast bar at European hotels. There is so much that it is hard to choose from. Of course most Europeans make breakfast their biggest meal of the day. There is a lot of fresh meat and vegetables and this particular hotel had chocolate. You know I was all for that.

Our first day out we explored Copenhagen. I have to say I love this city. The people are so nice and friendly. They like to have fun and they enjoy being outdoors.

Kayaking in the canal. So much fun and activity going on. Bicycling is a very popular mode of transportation and who can blame them with gas being about $10.00 American. WOW!!! I also loved all the fresh flowers everywhere. And I loved that so many people wore dresses, short dresses, long dresses, flowy dresses. I loved them all.

See all the bicycles? There are dedicated bicycle lanes everywhere. And you better stay out of them because the cyclists will run you over. They have the same right of way as vehicles.

We saw the Little Mermaid Statue. Our tour guide explained that she has suffered a lot of wear and tear through the years. She has been the target of defacement throughout the years. How sad. But she has been restored each time. The Little Mermaid has been a major tourist attraction since its unveiling in 1913.

This building was near our hotel. Very unique.

We visited Glyptokeshaven. This park has some of the most unusual statues and the most beautiful flowers. It was a perfect day for it with temps in the mid 60’s F.

The next day we visited Christianborg Palace. The Palace has an 800 year-long history as Denmark’s seat of power in Central Copenhagen. This site houses the Danish Parliament, Prime Minister’s office and Denmark’s Supreme Court. The palace is also home to visiting Danish Monarchs.

We also visited Frederiksborg Castle. It was beautiful!!! There was even a moat all around the castle. It was built as a royal residence for King Christian IV of Denmark- Norway in the early 17th century.

I will have more about the other countries we visited in later posts. We started making our way back home last Monday. We flew out of Helsinki Finland which was our last stop on the trip. We left out at 3:15AM, It was a nightmare. Every flight was delayed and ultimately resulted in us missing our last flight which was out of Atlanta. Home is only three hours from Atlanta so we figured if worse came to worse we could just rent a car and drive back. But we were able to get on a later flight out of Atlanta. However it was delayed by about four hours. We finally got home after midnight on Tuesday morning. My luggage came through but Mark and Tyler’s luggage was left behind in Paris. Tyler got his the next day and Mark finally got his on Thursday.

I took off Tuesday and went back to work on Wednesday. Mark still has quite a bit of vacation time left. The rest of the week was spent catching up at work, buying groceries and doing the mountains of laundry we brought home. We had never had so much trouble traveling. Traveling is definitely not for the faint of heart especially international travel. But all in all it was a fantastic trip with so many memories and stories that will last a lifetime.

I am looking forward to catching up on many of my favorite blogs and my own. How have you been? What is going on in your part of the world?

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!

A Week In San Antonio Texas

I spent last week in San Antonio Texas. I had to be in Texas for a work trip. Our National Caves Association was meeting with the International Show Caves Association for the first time that I can ever remember. It was a big deal. This is a chance for show caves to come together and visit different caves and learn things about each cave that might be helpful for their own caves. So last week we met in San Antonio, home of The Natural Bridge Caverns in Texas, to visit and share ideas with each other.

Me and a couple of my co workers left on Sunday morning. We flew through Atlanta and arrived in San Antonio about 2:30 PM. We rented a car and headed to the hotel. The hotel was only about eight miles from the airport but we always like to have a car in case we want to see other things not on our meeting agenda.

We stayed at The Westin Riverwalk, San Antonio Let me just say this is a beautiful hotel. Every single person I encountered at this hotel was super nice and friendly. We were able to walk outside the back of the hotel and be directly on the Riverwalk. Each room had a small balcony. I was on the fourteenth floor so I had quite a view of the city. Especially at night. When we arrived at the hotel we checked into our rooms and took a short walk on the Riverwalk. We had a welcoming dinner that night and we wanted to get back to freshen up for that.

It was so nice catching up with people we had not seen in a few years. We hadn’t attended since 1999 because of Covid and some work issues last year. We had not seen some of our friends for a long time. This is a wonderful group of people and it is always nice getting together with them. I even got to see my sweet friend Kay who follows my blog, we have become such good friends even though we don’t see each other often.

***My sweet friend Ann, She is from Pennsylvania. I don’t get to see her often but when I do it is like we were never apart.***

Monday morning we started early with a buffet breakfast and a warm welcome from the Mayor of San Antonio, Ron Nuremberg, and our hosts from Natural Bridge Caverns the Wuest Family.

***We had a light lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon watching around the world cave videos from around the world. there were 47 caves represented and It was amazing.***

On Monday night we had a special dinner at The Buckhorn Saloon & Museum in downtown San Antonio. Great food and drinks were plentiful and just what everyone needed after a long day of sitting and listening. Check out the museum and saloon here

On Tuesday we visited the Natural Bridge Caverns and spent most of the day touring the cave. I added a lot of pictures to my Wordless Wednesday post last night and you can check it out here: Cave Photos

***The hidden wonders Tour was the second tour we did that day at the caverns. It is not open commercially yet but we got a sneak peek and it is truly a wonder!!!!***

***This was one of my favorite formations in the cave. It’s beautiful.***

***The grounds at the cave were beautiful with several gift shops and places to get something to eat. There was also a climbing tower but I was too chicken to do that.***

We were even treated to a horse show by The Diaz Family. It was great!!! Such talent and beauty.

On Wednesday afternoon we took a boat ride down the Riverwalk. It was hot the temps were mid 90’s F but there was a wonderful breeze and it was just beautiful.

***You know how I love church steeples. This one is amazing!!!!***

After we finished the boat ride we took a tour of The Alamo. There is so much history here. Even though it is a fairly small structure, compared to what I had in mind from the movies, it is steeped in history. The names listed below are not all of the names on display. I picked some pictures of those because they were from Tennessee.

After our tour of the Alamo we were on our own for the rest of the evening. We split into smaller groups and headed out for drinks and dinner and a little shopping.

Some of my favorite cave friends, Kara and Ann.

On Thursday we had meetings and individual group sessions and then we had Western night. We put on our boots and cowboy hats and walked to the Briscoe Western Art Museum and had a tour and dinner. I didn’t stay out too late because we had an early flight.

A wonderful time and such a learning experience. The week seemed to fly by like it always does. Friday morning came early and we left for the airport at 3:30 AM. We had a very early flight. It was so good to get back home to hubs and the kitties. And to be able to sleep in my own bed.

I loved San Antonio. I had never been in this part of Texas before. I will go back.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!!