Thank you, thank you very much...

     I finally was able to go and visit my nephew in Tennessee this summer.  He lives in a small town in between Memphis and Nashville.  The views on our road trip were just beautiful.  I can't wait to schedule another trip and visit the Great Smoky Mountains.  An amazing part of the trip was the fact that my nephew had no idea that we were visiting.  We drove to his tiny town, watching nothing but fields of corn and silos whiz by.  We pulled up and he comes out and just stares at the car until he realizes that it's us!

   He took us immediately over to his horses, except that they weren't there just yet.  They called them over and they came running up from the meadow and forest.  All five of them!  It's funny...my half Puerto-Rican nephew is a cowboy in Tennessee.  He seemed happy and content with this way of life, no matter if I could never imagine myself living in a similar environment.
    We ended up taking him to Memphis for two days.  We visited Graceland first.  It was funny imagining this grand estate, but the actual mansion is not that big.  But I guess back then it was considered a big house (he only paid $100,000 for it!).  We were given a tour of the inside of the house, as well as the surrounding grounds and additional exhibits.  I always knew Elvis was the King, but seeing all of his records, awards, and posters/memorabilia was just mind-boggling.  After the tour, we saw the gravesite and took pictures.  Another thing that perplexed me was the proximity of the estate to the main road.  There are also neighborhoods on the other side of the fence.  Can you imagine living in a house with a backyard that runs up against Graceland?
     After Graceland, we headed over to our hotel in downtown Memphis.  Right across from the hotel there was Mud Island River Park, which had a mini Mississippi river you could wade in.  It was actually really cool and made to size as it ran through all of the states that it cuts through.  It all ended with a huge swampy pond in New Orleans that led out to a small lake where my nephew and I rode paddle boats.  After that we headed over to Beale Street and some of the other sites in Memphis.

    The next morning we went to the National Civil Rights Museum, which is adjacent to the Lorraine Motel, the site where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  It was very emotional to go through the tour and see the actual hotel room where Dr. King stayed.  The entire tour was intense and I am so glad to say that my nephew payed really close attention to all of the exhibits.  I was a little scared that it would be a waste of money and he wouldn't want to go in, but he really was standing there digesting all of the information.  After the tour, we headed over to the Memphis Zoo where it was ridiculously hot.

Johnny Cash!

     It was sad taking him back home after our adventures in Memphis, but I truly believe that he had a great time.  When we took him back home, he took me on a ride on his go-kart into the woods!  It was kind of scary but cool to go through the woods and then land in an open field with dragonflies buzzing by as we drove.  It was a wonderful trip, a long overdue trip, but I am so happy I got to see him.  I know he was sad when we left but I just hope that he could focus on the positive and be glad that we got to have fun with him while we were up there.  I miss him already :)

The city where my nephew lived is in between Memphis and Nashville, and that's a long stretch of driving.  We wanted to take him to Nashville with us but it would have been too much driving back and forth.  So as we made our way to Florida, we stopped in Nashville for a day.  It just happened to be the Country Music Awards Fest, but it was so much fun!  We did a trolley tour and saw all of the main sights:  the state capitol, the Parthenon, Music Row, and the Country Music Hall of Fame among others.

So it was nice to meet you Tennessee!  We'll meet again soon!

HOTlanta!

Oh, summer vacations always go by so fast!  This summer I had the chance to go to several places.  I first started of by going to Atlanta with one of my good friends, Mandy.  Here are a few pics of the places we hit on our trip to HOTlanta (definitely not an exaggeration...)

We visited the top of Kennesaw Mountain.  It was pretty hazy so the views of Atlanta weren't the best.  It was a really nice hike though.

RANDOM ALERT!  We visited the Cabbage Patch Hospital!  It was just too unbelievable to pass up.  I had to see a Cabbage Patch being born, and we did!  Mother Cabbage was dilated ten leaves! lol.  I was amazed at how all Cabbage Patch babies pretty much always have that distinctive smell.  I'm pretty sure my own still has that smell (wherever she is - in the attic maybe...)

We visited this small northern Georgia town of Helen, which basically was Epcot Germany x1000.  We went tubing down the mountain river and saw lots of interesting sites, including a dog floating down on his own tube, as well as a baby sporting a real mullet. Really...

Random alert again!  GOATS ON A ROOF!  This was so much fun.  It basically is just this roadside attraction where you can feed goats.  I sat on this bike and wheeled a cup of food up to the goats on the roof (they could come up and down as they pleased).  It was odd, but cute!

I had a great time in Atlanta, and I could talk about visiting the Georgia Aquarium, or Olympic Centennial Park or Coca-Cola headquarters....but, I must leave you with this pic of....milkshakes?!  These aren't just regular milkshakes, folks.  These are liquid nitrogen milkshakes from Top Chef All-Star's winner Richard Blaise's burger restaurant, Flip!  Delicious!  What you see here are the Strawberry Shortcake and some kind of toasted marshmallow milkshake.  They were super light and creamy.  Yum! Cheers to Atlanta!

Savannah, Ya'll!

Approximately five hours from Orlando lies the beautiful and historic city of Savannah.  I finally went to this city this past weekend with a group of my friends.  I wasn't sure what exactly to expect, but I knew that it would be a charming southern city.  And Paula Dean is from there, too so what could be better than that?  We got there safe and sound, and our hotel was in a perfect location across from River Street, the nightlife street right on the river, hence the name - duh! winning!  Sorry I couldn't resist...So here's a quick rundown of our trip:

Day 1:  Was the best....day....ever.  And let me tell you why.  Mrs. Wilke's Boarding House.  Amazing!  We got up early and headed over to this gem to wait in line for lunch.  I need to read up on the history of this place, but basically you wait in line to share a table with other people.  And when I say wait, I mean like WAIT in line like you are in Disney World waiting for a ride.  We kept inching up and up in line, tummies grumbling, only to have to wait some more.  I was a bit skeptical at first, not really thinking that there could be anything so good that it was worth waiting so long.  But finally, we got IN.  And it's set up like someone's home, lots of pictures on the walls....and then they take you to your table.  And it's like a scene of the southern last supper.  There had to be about twenty different dishes on that table.  Fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, potato salad, BISCUITS, sweet corn, squash, beef stew, CORNBREAD, stuffing, green beans, and on and on and on.  You just kept passing plates back and forth, stuffing your face.  It was heaven!  Definitely worth the wait.  And when we left, there happened to be some students doing a taping of people's reactions so we all got together with our tourist enthusiasm to talk about how great the food was.  I need to look that up actually - I wonder how it came out.  After Mrs. Wilke's, we headed over to our River Boat cruise.  It was so hot though that I think I nodded off for most of it.  But it was a nice, relaxing afternoon.  To end the day, we ended up at Moon River Brewery on Bay St.  More good food, mmmmmm.

FORREST!!

Day 2:  Trolley tour through the city!  Yay, I loved seeing all of the houses and squares.  Savannah has a city square every few blocks.  I love cities where you can just walk around.  It was so quaint and cute.  I also loved the style of all of the homes.  I get very excited when I see brick - I'm a dork.  But it's true, I love old houses.  We went on a tour of the Thomas-Owens house and OMG - I think we had the most eccentric tour guide.  Eccentric or high...or both.  I had to stifle my laughter just listening to him speak.  I just couldn't get over his tone of voice and his body language.  Almost as if he thought he was more knowledgeable than everyone else, which he probably was.  But he literally had his nose in the air the whole time and would sigh "Any questionsssssssssss....."  Ugh.  I must say though, that the best part of our trolley tour was seeing "Forrest Gump" run off of the trolley in front of us and run down the street.  Hilarious!  I got a picture of it....Run Forrest Run!!!

Foodwise, we ate at Paula Dean's restaurant, Lady and Sons, for lunch.  It was great.  I had an asparagus sandwich and it was delicious.  I'm on an asparagus kick lately - it's somehow become my favorite vegetable.  For dinner, we ended up at Pirate's House, an incredibly old place.  I finally had some catfish - what I had been craving the whole time!

Lady and Sons

We went out on River Street during the night and ended up at the same karaoke bar after hopping around a bit.  We met a group of cute military boys who were really nice and funny.  I ended up doing some impromptu swing dancing with one of the guys.  It was actually fun just having him spin me around and dip me to the ground, though I do give him major props for not dropping me since he was obviously hammered.

Day 3:  Sad day.  Why do weekends go by so fast?!?  We visited the Visitor's Center and saw the actual Forrest Gump bench in the museum.  I had to say I was sad I couldn't physically sit in it.  Besides Forrest Gump, a lot of other movies have been filmed in Savannah, including Forces of Nature and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  I really need to watch that last one because the book was everywhere and a lot of it was filmed in Forsyth Park.  I honestly have no recollection of what we ate.....???  Oh, that's right,  Wendy's on the drive back to reality!