Knoxville

Friday afternoon (after a week of hell with Hubble proposals), I got the Megabus down to Knoxville, Tennessee, to meet Caroline for the weekend. The bus was late so when she picked me up from the bus stop, we headed straight into downtown for food. Once we found somewhere to park, we headed to Market Street, which is a pedestrian area with lots of bars and restaurants.  It was really nice and the weather was amazing! I forgot to take any photos though. :-( We were so hungry. We ended up putting our names on a waiting list for a nice vegetarian restaurant and going to get a glass of wine first. But the food was nice and we scoped out some places to try later.

On Saturday morning, we wanted to go to an old house with some tulip gardens. At first we went to the wrong house and quickly escaped, saying we would come back for the tour (but we never did). Once we finally found the Crescent Bend house (the right house), it was a bit confusing. It looked like they were setting up for a wedding so we were a bit worried about gate-crashing. And there were 3 girls dressed up wondering around. We thought they were for the wedding but apparently they also just wanted to see they gardens (making us feel very underdressed!). We ended up feeling like we were sneaking in but we found the gardens.

Top of the gardens

Tennessee river

Fountain

Looking down from the house

Unfortunately we missed the main tulip time as most had flowered and been deheaded. But it was still really pretty. We didn't get to go into the house (we couldn't figure out how to get in!) which was a shame.

Tulips 

More tulips

After Crescent Bend House, we headed to Knoxville zoo and had a great time wondering around. Plus the first ice-cream of the year! The weather was amazing and in the 80's. So nice. A lot of the animals were either sunbathing or chilling out in the shade. Caroline and I got a little burnt too.

Black bear 

Furry Armadillo! :-)

A baboon giving his opinion.

Sun bathing lion

Monkey and his friend

Playing 

Gorilla helpfully sleeping near the window

Posing Rhinos.

We must have been amazingly efficient as we were finished by about 2pm. On the way in, we had seen a sign for the botanical gardens. It was more of a field and we were just trying to find somewhere quiet in the shade to sit and chill out. But it seems to be very popular with photographers and we seemed to be getting in everyone shot so we decided to give up and headed back to the hotel for a rest.

We chilled out for a bit before popping out to find a liquor store as we both wanted to try proper moonshine. The store was amazing!

Moonshine!

We selected 3 little ones, 1 classic and 2 flavored (strawberry and apple pie). We have only tried the apple pie so far.

Classic, Strawberry and apple pie moonshine.

Caroline preparing

Ready

We both decided it would be better chilled with some ice! A lot of ice! I'll let you know what the others taste like.

A little too strong!

Not so good.

After the moonshine tasting and we were sure we weren't going to go blind, we got a taxi into town so we could both have a few drinks - nicer ones. (When we booked hotel, the site said it was downtown, but it lied! It was a 10-15 min drive from downtown! :-( )

Knoxville was pretty busy this weekend. They had a football game by the Tennesse Volenteers (the collage team) so there were lots of people dressed in orange. (It felt very similar to Blacksburg at times.)

We went to the Sunsphere (which was part of the 1982 World Fair) and were really happy we hadn't gone during the day. The observation deck was shut for renovations. But the lounge bar was open. Perfect!

Sunsphere.

enjoying the view, drinks, and company

Drinks in the sun.

After some wine and nibbles, we headed into downtown. They had closed off Gay Street for the Rossini festival. We have no idea what it was for but it was fun to wonder around. There were lots of street performers, food vendors, and craft stalls. So we had a great time checking out all the jewelry stalls.

View down Gay street of the festival

Tennessee Theatre.

We decided we wanted to sit down with a glass of wine for dinner so headed back to Market Street. Everywhere was packed so we put our name name for an outside table and went into the bar. We ended up getting bored waiting and eat inside instead, before heading to the Hilton to get a drink there (as we figured there would be taxi's there). We had one drink and still no taxis so we had to cheekily ask them to order us a taxi to go to another hotel. :-)

Last drink of the night at the Hilton.