Holiday to Tennessee in Mar 2024: Day 11 – Chattanooga to Atlanta

By Nige on Tue 02 Apr 2024 at 20:29
Type: Post
Story: Holiday to Tennessee in Mar 2024
Tags: Atlanta | Chattanooga | Georgia | Hertz | Hilton | Holidays | Tennessee | USA

As normal, the day started with a visit to Starbucks. It was my turn since Vick was coming down with a cold. The nearest Starbucks was about half a mile away, so it took about 10 mins to get there.

Unfortunately, a young lady jumped in front of me in the queue whilst she was taking orders over the phone and I had to wait for five coffees to be made for her before I saw our two appear.

We had a fairly relaxed start to the day. We popped into breakfast; just in time as it happens.

Breakfast finished at 10am and we didn’t arrive until 5 mins before! That’s unheard of for us.

We were sorry to say goodbye to Chattanooga – we have enjoyed being here and we would be happy to come back again.

After checking out, we decided to pick up some drugs to help Vick’s cold, then we stopped off at Lookout Mountain, which appears to be the main attraction in the Chattanooga area.

There are three attractions at Lookout Mountain: Ruby Falls, the Incline Railway and Rock City.

None of which we specifically wanted to do on this occasion – we just wanted a view and a bit of a walk.

We found just what we wanted at Point Park.

Point Park is a ten acre memorial park that overlooks the Lookout Mountain Battlefield and the city of Chattanooga.

It cost us $10 per person to get access to Point Park. Vick wasn’t fit for a heavy hike, but a gentle wander around a park would be just the ticket.

Once through, we were dragged to the obvious viewpoint on the right hand side, which overlooks the Tennessee River with Chattanooga in the far distance.

Unfortunately, it was a little overcast, so the view was not that clear. It was still impressive.

To be honest, we couldn’t think of a place in the world with a more significant overlook.

After finishing up in Point Park, our next stop was a Starbucks in Calhoun, which was about half the way to Atlanta.

We had an interesting experience when we parked up.

A Japanese couple were trying to extract themselves from the parking space behind us, when the woman managed to sandwich herself between her husband trying to reverse and our Tesla Model 3, so she protected our car, but (I’d imagine) she hurt herself in the process.

Not that she showed any pain. She was just desparate to ensure I didn’t want to involve any insurance companies.

Our normal coffees were boring in comparison to the earlier excitement.

Next stop was the Apple store at Cumberland Mall, not that far north of Atlanta.

Vick spent more than an hour there trying to buy a new iPhone 15 and transfer everything from her old phone to her new phone.

All was going well until she realised that newer iPhones no longer take physical Sims – they work on eSims. And Apple couldn’t get the physical Sim in her old phone to transfer its number over to the eSim in the iPhone.

That meant we couldn’t complete the trade in and we had to request Three issue an eSim by email.

We were hopeful it would come through quickly, but by the time we had gotten to this point, the Three contact centre had closed (at 8pm).

We left having not completed the trade-in and likely needing to come back the next day.

Due to how tight we were in respect to range, we decided it might be prudent to pop in to a local supercharger for 15 mins.

Whilst there, we obviously did more research on the issues with Three and attempting to order eSims.

Finally, we were on our last driving leg of the day, heading to the Hampton Inn & Suites, Atlanta Downtown.

We didn’t get there until after 4pm due to how long we were at the Apple store.

I had checked into room 812 yesterday. Top floor corner one-bed suite room.

We were provided keys to room 815, which ended up being a far worse room. It was located in the middle of the hotel, suffered from a horrid smell, and the bathroom door wouldn’t close!

Other than that, it was a fab room!

I rang down and complained. Front Desk staff came up and let us into 817, which was a larger corner room. The downside was that it was really warm.

We got some odd story about needing an engineer to change the temperature via a control in the attic. None of it made any sense to be honest.

We eventually saw an engineer, who indeed got into the attic.

Apparently, when the air con system was recently refurbished, all of the cold water feeds had been turned off, and no one had turned them back on.

So all rooms were running warm.

All they needed to do, was to turn them back on again!

Why on earth hadn’t they just proactively done turned them back on? Unbelievable.

As compensation, we were offered free car parking overnight (saving $35) – better than nothing!

Vick managed to get some sleep.

Finally, we drove back to the Cumberland Mall to The Cheesecake Factory (TCF).

TCF wasn’t busy, so we got a booth for two without any delay.

We ordered the Nachos and Thai lettuce leaves to share. They are both huge meals on their own, so they were more than plenty for our tiny tummies!

Naturally, we invested in taking lemon raspberry cheesecakes back to hotel and enjoyed them whilst watching Castle on USA.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday to Tennessee in Mar 2024