Knoxville in a day

For a time in the early 20-teens, I lived in the USA (northern Virginia to be exact). I was an Au Pair, which is basically a glorified term for a foreign, live-in babysitter. It was the most exciting, exhausting, educational eighteen months of my life. Whilst living in east coast suburbia, I met some of my best friends when we joined a scavenger hunt through Washington D.C. and bonded over our shared love of Georgetown’s architecture and cupcakes.

A few months (and many nights out, weekend trips to New York and all-you-can-eat Buffalo Wing Factory visits) later, one of the girls messaged our group chat with a suggestion that we still laugh about to this day. She had been searching for bus tickets for her vacation that summer when she stumbled on free tickets to Knoxville, Tennessee. We disregarded the fact that it was a 9 hour bus ride - “We can sleep on the bus!”. All she had to do was pay the reservation fee of 50c. This was too good to pass up. The dates weren’t flexible but, at $7 for 7 friends, she didn’t mind if one of us ended up cancelling (which no one did).

So when the allotted Friday night rolled by, we met at Union Station (our designated meeting spot for trips involving public transport and not someone’s host parents’ borrowed car). As it was the first weekend in February, it had recently snowed and waiting in line for the bus (under cover but outside) was the only thing that kept us awake after a long day of childminding. Eventually it was time to board the 11 pm bus bound for Knoxville. As could have been predicted, we did not, in fact, sleep on the bus.

Bright and early, we rolled into Knoxville. The bus stop was literally just the bus stopping on the bridge leading into town. First things first - coffee. Unfortunately, this was before I developed my penchant for local owned, specialty coffee shops and so we found the closest Starbucks open at 8 am on a Saturday. But, a free toilet to freshen up after 9 hours of sitting in a bumpy bus, we couldn’t complain!

Caffeinated, we walked around a quaint General Store, window shopped in the downtown area clearly meant for tourists such as ourselves and found a tower we could go up. I was extremely sad to find out that Dollywood was a little ways outside the city - I vowed to visit again but, like most travel vows you make in the moment, I never returned. In the afternoon, to kill time (and get out of the winter weather) we headed to the local shopping mall. New boots in hand, we had dinner in the food court and made our way back to the area where the bus would depart.

Have mercy, this was taken on a moving bus using a Cybershot Point & Shoot from 2008, on next to no sleep.

All in all, it was probably not the wisest decision but fun travel stories rarely start with smart choices. So back to D.C. we rode - tattoos, missing mittens and memories of singing YMCA in a more innocent age in tow. We arrived back in our home town to discover that it had snowed yet again and, for the life of me I don’t know where we got the energy, had breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts. Heading home I watched the Ravens beat the 49ers in the Superbowl with my host dad and slept like a log until my alarm rang the next morning for the start of another week of work.

The lesson? Do the crazy stuff whilst you can still function on 2 hours’ sleep!