Touring Tennessee: Day One

Due to some personal issues, we were not able to travel to Missouri and Kansas as we'd originally planned.  We opted instead to drive to Nashville, Tennessee for a few days.  None of us in the Renz family had ever been to Nashville and we figured, why not?

The first day of our trip was spent in the car.  We left Charleston, SC at about 8:00 AM EST.  We stopped for lunch in Spartanburg, SC and a quick visit with my friend Rebecca Williams, who is starting her own cosmetics company, Vexxy Cosmetics, a fully vegan line of make-up.  You can check out her progress blog here.

When we finally entered Tennessee through North Carolina, tornado warnings were tearing up the radio station airwaves.  We were in Knoxville hearing reports of tornadoes touching down all over the area, so we chose to pull over and wait it out in a Wal-Mart.  Let me tell you something, Wal-Mart is the worst place to take refuge in the event of a tornado, because there isn't anywhere to go in a giant warehouse.  They'll just stick you in the center of the store, most often the Apparel section, and tell you that you'll have to wait it out and hope a tornado doesn't come crashing down on you.

Obviously a tornado did not come crashing down on us or I wouldn't be writing this.

Anyway, after we left the Wal-Mart, we continued driving along the I-40 to Nashville.  I was scared out of my mind because the tornado warnings and reports were nonstop, and I had my dad on the phone the whole time looking at the radar on the Weather Channel's website.  He said there were several cells to the southeast of us and it looked like we were barely missing all the rotations.  Somehow we managed to avoid seeing one single cyclone, which is a blessing because we're not dead, but frustrating because I really wanted a shot of a twister to show everyone.

We finally arrived at our hotel in Nashville around 9 PM CDT.  We stayed at La Quinta Inn on Sidco Drive in southeast Nashville.

Do not stay at this hotel.

I am going to summarize our four-night, three-day stay at this miserable pit in this blog post only so the rest of the blogs about the trip aren't tainted with the bad taste of displeasure.

When we arrived, they gave us the wrong room.  It was a nice room, with a big king sized bed.  But we'd asked for two doubles when we'd reserved the place.

We should have just stayed in this room.  It was bright and happy and clean.

After that was cleared up, they put us in a new room with two double beds.  The smell upon entering - I don't even know where to begin.  It clearly had poor ventilation and being next to the swimming pool didn't help.  It was an odd mixture of chlorine, mold and mildew.  The floors were not vacummed.  The towels were folded neatly but upon unfolding to use one to take a shower I discovered they were all extremely damp.  The place was so bad I decided I didn't want to remember it, and hopefully eventually forget it, so to help with that I refused to take photos of the abomination disguised as a hotel room.

I complained the next morning and they apologized and said while they couldn't move us again, they'd fix the towel issue and knock $10/night off our price.

Almost an entire workweek goes by and the towels are consistently damp, the floors are never vacuumed and they never honored the discount.  We made sure to have maid service come every day we were there and nothing changed.  They didn't even take out the trash.  Continental breakfast, while certainly is not going to be stellar by any means, included a waffle machine that was utterly destroyed by another guest on our check-out day and it took staff almost an hour to start cleaning it up, without even bothering to throw down a plastic "Caution" sign for the benefit of the other guests.  Their toaster was plugged in but did not function - period.  They had stale slices of white bread and bruised apples.  Basically the waffles were the only halfway decent offering the place had and they allowed what I imagine a four-year-old to attempt to operate and essentially demolish it and anyone else's chances of happiness that morning.  Allie Brosh at Hyperbole-and-a-Half knows what I'm talking about when it comes to waffles equaling happiness and love. 

Anyway!  If we ever go back to Nashville, which we ADORED, we'll be staying here:

Wyndham Historic Hotel:  Union Station

NOT HERE:

La Quinta Inn Nashville South

Day Two of our Tennessean trip coming soon!  With BETTER photographs, I promise!