We decided to spend Valentine’s weekend in a very chilly Chattanooga. You may well ask when did they drop the Saint from Valentine? Was he defrocked? Did he do something wrong to be removed from Sainthood? Anyway, onto the main event:
We stayed at the Bluff View Inn in the Bluff Art District. The Bluff View Inn is a bed and breakfast establishment located in three turn-of-the-century houses overlooking the Tennessee River. However, that is not strictly true; only the Maclellan House and The Martin House overlook the river, while the Thompson House is nearer to the underpass. But more of that later.
On the subject of “bed and breakfast”, they only provide breakfast on weekends which is situated in the Mother Ship, The Maclellan House. Between Monday and Friday guests are given vouchers which they exchange for breakfast at the neighboring coffee shop, Rembrandt’s . Orders are taken at the counter which works very well if there are any tables available. We managed to find a table for two adjacent to the front door, but experienced an arctic blast each time another customer walked in.
Chattanooga is a charming town and the main attractions are the “fresh water”acquarium, Lookout Mountain incorporating Ruby Falls, and the Hunter Art Museum. We had visited all three in the last few years, so we wanted to enjoy the river walk and the magnificent spectacle of the River Tennessee untainted by commercialism and pollution. Unfortunately, the temperature was a balmy 18 degrees faranheit when we embarked on our Sunday morning constitution. Luckily we stumbled across the Chattanooga Choo Choo made famous by Glenn Miller, and managed to escape the frigid conditions for a few minutes. You’re possibly wondering who is Glenn Miller? Suffice to say I am a big fan of Glenn Miller’s big band music from the 1940s.
A unique attraction for visitors is the Walnut Street Bridge. Built in 1890, and spanning 2,376 feet, it was the first highway bridge to connect downtown with the North Shore. The bridge closed to motor vehicles in 1978 and sat in disuse and disrepair for nearly a decade. it reopened in 1990 as a pedestrian walkway and is one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world.
Returning to our accommodation we were given a very spacious room in the Thompson House. It was tastefully furnished with a collection of period pieces which enhanced the ambience of the room. Unfortunately the bed’s mattress felt like a rock which may have been specifically designed for previous guests, the Flinstones’ while the pillows had the texture of cement bags.
Nevertheless, a couple of bottles of bubbly intermixed with some fine chardonnays and pinot noirs helped dull the pain. That is until the early hours of Monday morning when I was unceremoniously awoken at 3.45 am by an horrendous beeping noise followed by yellow flashing lights. I opened my eyes and exclaimed “What the dickens!” Editorial intervention has censored the actual wording of the exclamation used. I momentarily thought I was in the middle of a remake of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
I looked out through the curtains and saw a dumpster maneouvring back and forth in the parking lot. Leroy was barking out orders to his co-pilot: “up bit, down a bit, drop it! Do it again man, you didn’t make enough noise….crash, bang wallop.”
(Definition: a dumpster is a large waste container for garbage, trash, rubbish whatever your origins, designed to brought and taken away by a special truck or to be emptied into a garbage truck.)
Note to self: do not book a Sunday night at the Bluff Inn again.
