I wish that today didn't exist. Holy **** it was bad. With barely more than 2 hours sleep under our belts, I woke up with my eyes so sore that I honestly think they'd have been less sore if I'd pried them out of their sockets with a blunt stick. That Stace could even operate at all at this time of morning with such severe lack of sleep gives the indication that we were still drunk. And we were. And by God I was happy about that. Because I have no idea how on earth we ever would have dealt with this situation had we had our entire wits about us. It was like we were still too drunk to care at all about our hopeless predicament. To survive the day, we needed more miracles today alone than a prospective saint needs in a lifetime. And the first of these was getting ready, packed, and downstairs for our transfer to the airport by 6am. Yep, that's only 3 hours after we finished partying. Luckily for us, in our half brainless state last night (this morning?), we began the process of packing our bags. Notice how I didn't make mention of that in yesterday's blog? That's because I couldn't remember doing it at all! Oh geez. I bet we rang people too. But we did manage to get ourselves ready and finish packing this morning, then get ourselves downstairs in time for our transfer. We checked out of the room and - remember this for later as it's a particular poignant part of the story - they let us know there was no account to settle and we were right to go. The ride to the airport, check-in, and the wait for our plane were all particularly uneventful, mainly because in our collective state we wished they were actually forgetful. Stace did get pulled aside for extra screening during the security check, but given this was the third time for the trip this had happened to her, even that is now getting just standard. Once we were through security, we were in desperate need of something, anything, to fill our stomachs. I saw something that looked remotely like an espresso machine and someone who remotely looked like she knew how to use it, so hoped against all hopes that the coffee would be remotely ok. The second miracle of the day didn't occur here; it was beyond ****. I remember a scene from Austin Powers where Austin mistakes Fat *******'s **** with a pot of coffee, and I kind of imagine this is exactly what it would have been like. It was not what I needed, but lucky I was still too out of it to care all that much. What I did need was food. Stace was good and found some fruit and yoghurt, but I wanted greasy, and found it in a breakfast burrito. It too was likely terrible, but at the time, I was in heaven. The flight down to Dallas too was largely uneventful, mainly because we escaped the majority of it to the land of nod - a truly needed holiday. But it was in Dallas where our second miracle happened. Dallas is a massively huge airport; with hundreds of gates in 5 terminals, all separated by a train ride (woo hoo!). We only had a 51 minute layover between flights - less between disembarking and boarding - and our flight was late to depart, which meant less time again. We were worried, to the point of certainty, that we wouldn't make it to our next flight. But we shouldn't have been. Dallas is an airport built for transiting passengers, and despite needing to get the train between terminals, we made it in perfect timing to our boarding gate for our next flight. Seriously, it was literally as they called boarding that we rocked up. It didn't stop us from having to be brisk in that transit though, which was a good thing for Stace because she got to experience a first in her life, by walking down a moving escalator. The tide of this day was quickly turning. We were living on edge! Again the couple of hour flight between Dallas and Nashville was relatively uneventful as well, and more good news came to Stace in that she got a little more sleep and I got to write some more of this blog, which she would love when she would get to read it later on. It wasn't all great news though, because she got confused by the in-flight food menu, mistakenly thinking there was a distinct lack of food on that menu. She didn't realise it opened up to more pages inside. Ah Stace. When we landed in Nashville, we felt largely back to our normal selves. And we felt even more buoyed when, in no time at all, our checked bags came through the carousel. This was the day's third miracle, and says a lot about why we felt so good by now. We started the day either still drunk or hungover as hell, depending on how you'd like to view it, and were faced with back-to-back flights with a short turnover between them to Nashville. We couldn't find our Nashville hotel voucher in our travel documents, so we started the day joking that today could turn into all sorts of a s***storm. At worst, we'd miss our connection, our bags would miss their connection, our hotel wouldn't have our reservation, and we'd be left to deal with all that with hazy, aching and tired heads. So far it had very much been an at best day. We got our flights, and our bags, and our heads had somehow got their dignity back. We were coasting, both metaphorically in our heads, and also literally in a taxi to our hotel, just 20 minutes after the flight landed from Dallas. But that is where our luck ended. Just as our discussion turned into a 'wow, what a great day', the hotel we rocked up to told us they didn't have a booking for us. Uh oh. A little concerned, we pulled out our documents to show our itinerary to the front desk staff, which clearly said we were staying there. We conveniently left out we didn't have a voucher. Sadly that wasn't enough, but they were kind enough to give us the wifi access so we could do some investigating and make some calls. As Stace did that, I made sure the hotel had a room so that, at worst, we had somewhere to stay. Thankfully they did, and they also let us know they wouldn't charge us until checkout so we had time to sort the issues out. The time difference to home wasn't doing us any favours at this time, as it was still the middle of the night, meaning we were struggling to get a callback from Flight Centre to sort out the issues. We decided to leave it and just email our travel agent Jo when we were settled, as it meant we could at least dump our bags and relax in our own setting to follow the issues up. We checked into the hotel and headed to our room, where we settled in and I emailed Jo. We didn't let it worry us again, knowing that Jo would be able to sort it out, and with the benefit of hindsight again it turned out that luck, in an indirect way, was still with us. When Jo did email back, she said she had us booked in, but it was a completely different hotel. It turns out she'd mistakenly booked us into a different Comfort Inn, but that she would sort it out and reimburse us when we got home. It turned out well because, had we gotten through to Flight Centre earlier, we would've been relocated to that one, which was a really long way out of Nashville. It was continuing to be a good day after all. Once we'd sent our email to Jo, we decided to walk into downtown Nashville to get our bearings, and as we were getting hungry, find some food for a late lunch. The walk itself took about 15 minutes, but it felt a lot less than that because we crossed over a railway yard, and there were trains in it. I love trains. We were making our way into town via Broadway, which is the main drag through the centre of the city. To be honest, the whole place seemed a bit mellow and quiet. How wrong we were. As soon as we hit the core downtown area that mellowness completely changed. Every single shopfront along both sides of the road were pretty much either a bar, pub, or cowboy boot store, with the vast majority falling into the first 2. And every single one of the bars and pubs had live country music blaring out their doors and open windows. Some even had 2 bands at once. The vibe was amazing and the street was pumping. It was pretty awesome, which was made all the more so by the fact it was only the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday! Nashville was going to be fun. Not long into the downtown part of Broadway, we found a restaurant called Jack's Bar-B-Que, which as its name suggests, specialised in barbecued and smoked meats. As the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do, so we thought when in Nashville, eat barbecued meat. That's a country thing isn't it? We certainly thought so, so we went in. Being unfamiliar with the barbecued meats, we looked puzzled as all hell looking over the menu, but eventually settled on a variety of meats to try. I even got a beer I'd bounced back that much, though Stace still wasn't ready to go that far. The meat was good. I'm purposely not saying delicious because Stace thinks I say that about all the food, so I'm not saying it for this. Truth be told, while good, it wasn't the best meat I'd ever had, and even if I wasn't stubbornly avoiding the use of delicious, that wouldn't have been my go-to description anyway. But it did give us the energy to explore. And that we did. We continued our trek down Broadway, passing countless bars - honestly I can't describe the sheer concentration of bars, beers and live music - all the way down to the banks of the Cumberland River. Looking past the whole country music and bar scene, Nashville was looking like a really pretty city, with a streetscape full of character and a beautiful setting on the river. It was also a really walkable city, and they'd built a massive pedestrian and cycle bridge over the river to link Nissan Stadium, where they play American Football, on the other side with the city. I had previously read in a city guide (I'm fully informed) that the bridge have some good views of the city and was well worth the walk. Like it was my own idea, I suggested to Stace we should walk over it, so we headed that way. True to form, it was a beautiful view of the city and the river from its deck, and I basked in the credits that came my way (not really) at the good suggestion. On our way down from the bridge and back into the city, we found a neat little shop that sold Goo Goo cookies. It actually invented the cookie (or at least it's owners did), so was actually simply called the Goo Goo Shop. It looked like it contained some sweet stuff, so we went in and had a look. I'm glad we did because it did contain some pretty sweet stuff, including some amazing looking sundaes. Stace and I got really cute and orders one together, which had chocolate fudge, caramel, whipped cream, and cherry on top, that we shared in the diner inside the shop. It was cliche, but I think we did it better. While we were there we also got the reply I detailed earlier from Jo, our travel agent. If you can't remember it, I've written a lot of **** since I wrote it, so you gotta look way back. Anyway, before we left the Goo Goo Shop, Stace bought some Goo Goo cookies as a present for her mum, as she had requested some American biscuits if we could get them. Big tick for Stace. We pretty much rolled out of the shop and back onto the street, but that didn't stop us being attracted into a bar once we were back on Broadway. The lady at the door suggested we go in, and it worked a treat because we did. The live music inside was also a factor, and probably a bigger one (sorry to disappoint you door woman). Inside, we both ordered a beer, which Stace even found refreshing after our bit of a walk. We really liked the look of this place, and the music was awesome. But we weren't looking for a big afternoon, so we made a mental note of it and after just a single drink (another miracle), we decided to head off. We were actually pleasantly surprised by our level of output today, we'd seen more of Nashville than we though possible when we opened our eyes this morning, but we were also well and truly ready for a relaxing late afternoon and early night back at the hotel. Plus we had a heap of washing we wanted to do. We were getting close to halfway through the trip, and despite Stace packing pretty much everything but the kitchen sink into her bag, she was out of clothes. I for that matter had just worn the same stuff over and over and over again, so I had plenty of clothes left, but I just stunk. Not really, I'm clean. You could eat off me. But I was running out of underwear. Needless to say we both needed to wash. As luck would have it, the hotel we were mistakenly at happened to have a laundry! Another miracle! After a bit of a rest in our room, a further email response from Jo letting us know she'd fixed up the room misunderstanding (I highly recommend Flight Centre), and a visit to reception to get some dollar bills, we gathered all our clothes and took them to the laundry. This is where we first struck problems. We searched for the laundry powder, but unfortunately we couldn't find it. Stace went back to the hotel reception to ask for it, and came back with the sound knowledge it could be purchased from the vending machine, of which there was one inside the laundry. But no; despite countless times looking over the vending machine there, the only thing we achieved was confidence in knowing that there were only drinks in the machine. Confused, I wanted to Google if any particular soft drink made good washing detergent, but that idea fizzed out (hehe). To avoid the embarrassment of a repeat trip again for Stace, I decided to go to reception this time to ask where the washing powder was, and I embarked downstairs. There, in a room directly under the laundry above, were two vending machines. And one of them had washing powder! Success! But really, why house the vending machine with the washing powder in a completely different room - on a completely different level - to the laundry? Weird. Anyway, after all that we were finally able to successfully put a couple of loads of washing on. Whoo! With that done, all that effort had made us hungry. Plus we had to work out how to get quarters so we could put the drier on later. There were a row of shops across the road, so we decided to head over there to find some dinner. We were keen to just relax in the hotel, so we settled on some pizza and pasta that we could take away and share in a romantic dinner on our hotel bed. 15 minutes after ordering, we were headed back to our room, with food to demolish and, more importantly, quarters lining our pockets. Back at the hotel, we settled in to watch the CNN coverage of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination for President in 5 states, in the so-called Super Tuesday. This isn't a political blog (far from it), but it doesn't really need to be to come to the conclusion that with that, Americans really are ****** actually. It was compelling viewing on the TV as the political commentators analysed the **** out of the day. That is, compelling if you like commentary of grass growing with an update every 30 seconds. But it was interesting to see how into it they get in their political coverage. And how much of a dullard Donald Trump is. Dinner went down a treat, and we got comfortable laying on the bed (no dirty thoughts), having a well earned down night. At some point we went and loaded all the clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, but other than that we booked into a walking tour for tomorrow, and I wrote some of my blog. We were so enthralled in our nothingness of a night that we failed to notice that it had started to bucket down with rain outside - it was absolutely pelting. Or maybe we'd just gotten complacent and forgotten that it does actually rain, given the fact that this was the very first time we'd seen rain in America. Eventually Stace fell asleep (no surprises there), and once the second round of drying was done (yep, there was that much), I collected it, built a clean clothes mountain by piling all the clean clothes on the spare bed, and impressed with my mountain constructing abilities, finally went to bed. From the position we were in this morning, I can't believe we made it to the end. Yep, it really was a miracle kind of day.