Stranded!

We had a great weekend in Nashville. Spent many, many hours on their boat, looking at some really nice, massive houses on the lakefront. Unfortunately we won't be moving into one of those homes right away. We need a year or two to become millionaires before we can purchase our fantastic lakefront property. :)

On Saturday Will and I drove around the different areas of Nashville so I could get a better idea of the "neighborhoods" we will potentially be living in. We both agreed that we don't want to live right downtown. I am looking forward to living in a neighborhood-like community that's still close to lots of restaurants and shopping, etc... Kind of like an urban suburb, if that makes sense. I really liked the Green Hills area. It's just a few miles from downtown and near Belmont and Vanderbilt Universities. There seems to be lots of shopping nearby, including a big mall (with a Cheesecake Factory! Yay!) and grocery stores are in the area, too. It's also relatively close to parks, which is nice. The best part about the area is that Trader Joes is going to be opening there soon! I'm definitely sold on that area!

We had some excitement on our trip back to Denver. Our Delta flight was scheduled to leave Nashville at 6:30 Sunday evening, go to Atlanta, then we had to catch another plane to Denver. When we showed up at the airport around 4:45 we were greeted by a HUGE line for the Delta counter. Uh oh. Apparently Atlanta had been hit with some big storms which in turn cancelled or delayed most flights. We were told by a Delta rep that our best bet was to get on the phone with Delta and try to get our flights worked out. Will was able to get through after holding for about 25 minutes and was told that the earliest they could confirm us on a flight back to Denver if we stayed in Nashville was the following Tuesday- 2 days later! There was no way that would have worked since I had to be at work the next day. Our other option was to take the much delayed flight to Atlanta and be confirmed for a 7:40 PM departure from Atlanta to Denver the next night. Either way, I was not going to make it to work on Monday.

We opted to get to Atlanta, so we hung around the airport and took our original flight...just 3 hours later than it was expected to depart. We got into Atlanta after midnight and headed straight to the hotel shuttles to try to get a room for the night. We were greeted there by utter chaos. There were hundreds of people crammed into a tiny area, all trying to catch shuttles to their respective hotels. The storms had stranded a lot of people. And being as late as it was, most people were grumpy. We made it to our hotel and got checked in just after 1 AM. We were exhausted, but hungry! Unfortunately no delivery services were available that late, so we shared a bag of animal crackers from the vending machine and passed out.

Since we didn't have to be at the airport until late afternoon on Monday we made the most of our day in Atlanta. Got a late checkout, ordered room service for breakfast, showered (and put the same clothes back on...always nice) and headed back to the airport to take the train downtown. I get now why that city is called "Hotlanta"- it was obscene how humid and hot it was! We went to the Underground, which is essentially an underground mall, walked through the Olympic park (where kids were playing in a water fountain...and had I had a change of clothes with me, I would have joined them!), and ended up going to the Aquarium, mainly to get inside to some air conditioning! The aquarium wasn't the most impressive one I've been to, but it was nice and cool, so I wasn't complaining!

Our flight home, surprise!, was delayed so we ended up getting back to Denver around 11 PM on Monday night, roughly 24 hours late. I'm really glad that Will is a good travel companion and is willing to go with the flow. I was so happy to get home and back to peace and quiet...I was getting really sick of being around hordes of people! Ah, the joys of traveling!