Nashville & Chattanooga, TN June 2024

This summer I had the opportunity to take an extra trip due to a family wedding in Chattanooga. Husband couldn’t go due to work constraints, so I flew out to Tennessee with my sister and niece. We decided we’d fly to Nashville, drive to Chattanooga to spend 2 nights, attend the wedding, drive back to Nashville for a night in an AWESOME Airbnb, and then the two of them would fly back home while I spent a couple of extra days doing some solo travel in Nashville. Whew!

Our flight to Nashville had us landing at 6 am. We got our rental car and then had some really good breakfast burritos at a restaurant called Snooze. The initial plan was to spend the day walking around Nashville and then drive to Chattanooga later on, but my niece wanted to sleep, so we hit the road instead. On our way to Chattanooga we stopped and did some hiking to a waterfall known as Greeter Falls. This was the perfect place to stretch our legs and soak our feet on a hot day. It ended up being more of a strenuous hike than we’d anticipated. Once we got into town, we met up with other family members, had dinner and a couple of drinks, then went to bed pretty early.

Saturday morning my sister and I drove to Lookout Mountain and had the best time at Rock City Gardens. From the top of the lookout in Georgia we were able to see 7 states at once. The rest of the garden was also fun to walk around in. We went through tight rock formations like Fat Man’s Squeeze and others and took tons of photos.

On the way back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding, I was dying for a coffee. I had researched all of the coffee shops in Chattanooga (of course) and so I knew exactly where I wanted to go. Sleepyhead coffee was the cutest little place, and we had just as much fun taking photos of the shop as we did drinking coffee and eating our donuts. At one point Sleepyhead got a horrible google review by some woman named Claudine, and they really capitalized on that, which we found hilarious.

Saturday night we attended the wedding, and then got up early on Sunday to head back to Nashville, but first we had to check out some of the fun things about Chattanooga that we found on Instagram. Our first stop was to Cardboard Hill—a large hill in the middle of town that the locals “sled” down in cardboard boxes. We grabbed boxes from a nearby dumpster and went down a few times until we grew tired of climbing back up the hill in the heat. We shared a lot of laughs! Next stop was The Passage, to dip our feet in the pool and cool off. Then we made our way to Umbrella Alley to snap a couple of cute photos.

Next, we stopped at a place called Lost City Caverns where we took a tour through a cave down to an underground lake. At the lake, we took a boat tour and learned about the history of the area. It was a lot of fun, a unique experience, and it was nice to be underground and cool on another very hot day.

When we got back to Nashville, we were a bit limited on time, because we didn’t want to try to find our Airbnb in the dark. I really wanted to stop at a place called Legendairy for some huge milkshakes that I had found online, so we chose to have ice cream for dinner that night.

After ice cream, we drove to the Airbnb and checked in. My sister picked this place as a surprise for me, and I had no idea what to expect, although I knew she was going to find something amazing. It turned out to be the most beautiful treehouse cabin complete with incredible views and a hot tub! We had the best night hanging out here, and I really wish we had booked more than one night.

Monday morning we cooked breakfast in the Airbnb, because they left us beautiful farm fresh eggs, then headed back into town and spent the entire day in Nashville. We grabbed boozy coffee drinks and donuts at the Donut Distillery, my niece got a tattoo, we played mini golf at Puttshack, ate lunch at Ole Red, did some shopping, and then I checked into the apartment I rented for my final 2 nights.

The apartment was called Locale the Gulch, and it was a great place. I had rented a studio, but was upgraded to a 2 bedroom apartment based on availability. Score!

We hung out at the rooftop pool until it was time for the other two to catch their flight. Once they took off, I had dinner at Party Fowl and then went to the brewery across the street from my apartment, Hi-Wire. I chose the apartment because of this brewery. It’s one of my favorites from Asheville, NC, and I was so excited to see that they had a branch in Nashville.

Tuesday I hit the ground running, because I wanted to see as much as I could in the one solo day that I had. I started out with breakfast at The Diner, went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, stopped at Ole Smoky distillery, Yee-Haw Brewing, Tennessee Brew Works, and Poindexter coffee. I had the famous Nashville Hot Chicken as a late lunch at Hattie B’s. From there I continued on to Tailgate Brewing, Marble Fox Brewing, and one more quick stop at Hi-Wire. Then I grabbed a big taco meal at Calle Taco, took it back to my apartment to eat, and spent the rest of the night relaxing in the pool. It was such a fun day, made possible only because of Lime scooters. I think it was 95 degrees, and there’s no way I could have walked around the entire city that day. Also, I know that seems like a lot of alcohol, but I didn’t have any moonshine at the distillery at all, and the rest added up to 5 beers in between 3 huge meals, so I was totally fine. I like to sample the beers at breweries, but not go crazy. I’m too old for that!