Friday, March 22, 2013

Fri 22 Mar - Knoxville, TN

After yesterday's full on day, today was significantly quieter.

We have a 3pm Megabus to catch to Knoxville and checkout at Millennium Maxwell House is 12pm so we decide on a lazy morning, a last gym session (3rd in 4 days, really good for us), pack up and breakfast.

We do indeed check out just before noon, leave our luggage with the hotel reception, find out that they do actually provide shuttle bus service all the way to South Nashville (great!) and then we wander around the block to Wendy's for lunch.

Wendy's has become a bit of a fast food favorite. They do baked potatoes and tasty chili to very reasonable prices and their quite drinkable coffee is only $0.99. Lunch cost us less than $8 incl tax for both of us.

After lunch, we wander back to the hotel and hang around in the lobby until just before 2pm, when we wander out to the front to catch the next shuttle bus.

Now, this was not a positive experience as the Italian driver was not too excited to go "that far" and disappeared for quite a while before coming back and telling us that there would be a shift change. By that time, it is 2.15pm and our Megabus would be leaving in 45 minutes time from the other side of Nashville town. Let's put it this way, we were not impressed. Anyway, the new shift driver got us there well before 3pm and he did not whinge about going so far, so all good.

However, now we wait there at the fantastic Megabus stop with umpteen number of facilities (see below) and 3pm comes and goes, until the bus finally arrives after 3.30pm.

Well, this Megabus driver, Safety Sam we called him, was stuffing around and seemed to be all around stressed and then finally drove off around 4pm, a good hour after published departure time. Oh well...
 
We arrive at Knoxville Transit Centre around 8.15pm, one hour late, and call for Holiday Inn Shuttle Bus service to pick us up. A shaggy bloke arrives in no time and boy, could he talk. He was giving Di a good run for the money. He gave us a scenic Friday evening shuttle bus tour of downtown Knoxville and pointed out restaurants and bars and a bit of history. He was clearly on the job of trying to sell his town to us (and presumably everybody else he has in his shuttle bus).
 
We check into our room on the 4th floor and promptly go out again to get some dinner. Time now is almost 9pm and we are hungry. We walk out the front, planning to walk the 2 or 3 short blocks to the centre, but who is there if not our shuttle bus driver with his bus. So we get on again and get off a few minutes later at Market Square.
 
One of the dining places our shuttle bus driver recommended was Tomato Head, which has "hippie food with an edge". Good enough for us late on a Friday evening so we try it. Plenty of people inside so can't be too bad.
We have a nice pizza and great beer. Hans has Sweetwater IPA from Atlanta, GA and Di has Sawworks Pale Ale, a local Knoxville brew. Hans IPA was so good so he had a second...
We were planning to wander around a bit and take a few photos, but it started to rain so we quickly wandered back to Holiday Inn. Here is the one photo from Market Square, Knoxville.
This Holiday Inn had a few nice touches that we haven't seen anywhere else. One was 4 pillows per bed (we got a twin room for the first time on this trip), which were labelled either soft or firm. They also had complimentary mouthwash (maybe their usual clientele has less than satisfactory mouth hygiene).
A bit of reading and blogging and time is 11pm so good night.

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