And it's a Wrap

I just looked back at my blog now that the holiday rush is over and I cringed. No posts since October? Has my life been that uneventful since October there's nothing of noteworthy interest?

Mostly, yes. But not entirely.

In early December my husband and I went with a couple of friends to see the Christmas decorations at Opryland Hotel and take a weekend off during the holidays. As it has been in past years, they spare no expense at decorating on a grand scale with giant Christmas trees several stories tall, immense wreaths and ribbons. Throughout the garden areas numerous variations of poinsettias added perfect color to the lush green.

However, I think it may be our last trip to spend the night there. At one point, I was standing in fifth floor hotel hallway with my ear to a house phone, luggage piled around me a full five hours after my arrival at the hotel, feeling a bizarre blend of shock, humor and exhaustion. The front desk clerk was offering me a small hotel room with the only bed being a pull-out sofa bed, a stark contrast to the premium balcony suite with a king size bed I'd reserved. That was the last straw. Despite making reservations months in advance, the hotel completely bungled things up. The room we ended up with wasn't at all what we reserved, and out of the many trips we've made there, I think a trip we made there last summer is the first and only one I can recall where the rooms were actually correct right from the start. How a resort can do so much otherwise right but fail so miserably on the reservations is unbelievable and really inexcusable.

We did discover that there's a few restaurants on the property well worth a return visit. Actually there are three, but one isn't so much a restaurant as a dose of chocolate delight. The Godiva shop sells a concoction called a Chocolixir. One sip and its additive properties take over the taste buds. We discovered these sweet-tooth taunting drinks last summer and made it a point to go back for seconds (well, thirds as we went for two rounds last summer!)

Moving on to the true restaurants. (Chocolate is good but for some reason my body does require real substance once in a while.) The famed Old Hickory Steakhouse isn't bad, but it is definitely over-hyped. We went there for dinner one night and the best course by far was the cheese course. The steaks and side dishes were mediocre at best, and the quality for the cost wasn't what I would expect. The Italian restaurant Volare was quite the contrary, it was excellent! It may have been in part due to our exhaustion, after all, we'd been struggling that first night to get simply checked into correct rooms and were all frustrated and hungry, but the starting with the salads the food was quite tasty and that has to be some of the best fried mozzarella I've ever tasted. Everything at dinner that night was exceptionally good, from the pasta and seafood entrees to the spectacular sampler desert. Our favorite of the deserts was the Ravioli al Marscapone; I'd go back just to have this tasty and unusual delight. In an effort to make up for the lousy experience we had getting our room, one of the managers also provided us with vouchers for breakfast for four at Water's Edge Marketplace Buffet. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of buffets and certainly wouldn't wait forty-five minutes to get a seat but given our lack of choices at the time, we waited. As Alton Brown says "your patience will be rewarded" and in this case, it was. The eggnog bread pudding was definitely something to write home about and for a buffet, the food quality was noteworthy.

I wouldn't however spend the night on a sofa bed to get any of the restaurants mentioned here. I am just now getting over the shock, horror and bodily aches of hauling around luggage for five hours. Maybe the manager should have thrown in a long massage, that might have eased my misery at the time a bit more.

We made one other restaurant stop but it wasn't on the Gaylord Opryland property. On our way out of town, we went to The Cheesecake Factory for Sunday brunch. Thankfully, this one is about as close as they get to my home or I'd be there way more often than I should. I know it's a chain, and while I usually express a bit of chain snobbery, I see why they have enormous profitability per store, in fact is the largest of the chain restaurants in the US. They manage an impressively huge menu and the day we went it was all fresh and fantastic.

It was a worthwhile trip and the decorations are something of a spectacle, especially to those who've never been to the hotel. To really take in the hotel, I recommend going during a different time of year; to get a little taste of the holidays (including getting indoctrinated to the crowds) it's not a bad visit. Just be really, really sure of your reservations and presume they'll be treated as merely a suggestion of what you'd like in a room when you get there.

And the trip goes on...

After a long day on the road, we finally arrived at the Crowne Plaza in Greenville, South Carolina. Our experience with the Crowne Plaza and reasonable reviews on Trip Advisor led us to stay there. Chatting with some of the hotel staff we found that the hotel was very recently renovated and used to be some other variant in the Holiday Inn family. It had two things going for it that I highly prize in a hotel: a comfortable bed and nearly non-existent noise level. They took the philosophy adopted by the Crowne Plaza chain with a sense of humor; at the lobby of the top floor, a simple sign greeted guests explaining that this floor was a Quiet Zone and no families with rambunctious kids, marching bands or otherwise noisy crowds would be permitted to stay there. The coordinating Do Not Disturb door tags even asked that guests keep the show tunes in the shower to a hum instead of stage-ready levels. Overall, the fact it was quiet and comfortable made for a winner. I don't think the hotel is quite as spacious and plush as other locations, but the price reflected that.

Then there was the other reason to stay there, and I would have tolerated a lot just for this one thing. Attached to the hotel was Ruth's Chris Steak House, and they just opened a week before we arrived. A quiet, comfy bed merely steps away from the best steak I've found yet, that might be a pinnacle of travel goodness. Suffice it to say that the Ruth's Chris in Greenville is well worth a stop and the new crew there are doing a great job keeping up the well-earned reputation of the best steak, period.

I think I'd describe Greenville as a comfortable city. It's one of those places that as soon as I got there, I felt at ease and could see why it's residents like it. The downtown area is what my hometown aspires to be someday, yet it still hasn't quite reached its full potential yet. Catchy shops and cafes fill most of the spaces along the tree-lined main street. It was notably clean, and the folks strolling along seemed to truly care about keeping it that way. Downtown there's a park with an usual suspension pedestrian bridge that overlooks a small waterfall. The park overall provides a place to relax for both tourists and area residents alike; locals were out playing frisbee and walking their dogs. With the downtown area just steps away, it's a balanced blend for small city life.

Downtown includes a variety of restaurants, leaving us plenty of good choices to just randomly pick from, including where we stopped in for lunch at Trio. We hadn't planned on a casual dining Italian restaurant, but we were glad we did. Ordinarily I'd have ordered a cup of soup and a small pizza to share, but my husband and I opted for the Pepperoni & Mozzarella Calzone. Again, we couldn't have chosen better. It was probably the best calzone I have ever tasted, with a perfect ratio of crust to fillings, all of which were delicious. I also tasted the roasted chicken, which in an Italian cafe whose emphasis is more on pizza & pasta, was surprisingly very good. With some warmer weather, I'd love to return to the downtown area, take a nice slow stroll through the shops and despite the variety of restaurants to tempt my taste buds, it would be difficult to turn down a return trip to Trio.

When I head out for a good road trip, I try to do a little research online for what is good local, and when it comes to BBQ, Henry's comes well recommended on sites like Chow. (No recommendations for chain restaurants on this site, unless they're really something extraordinary.) This was one of the few times I think our group disagreed with the recommendation. The only way to describe it is that it was some of the wettest BBQ I've seen anywhere. It wasn't bad, but only half our group thought it was good, the rest were unimpressed.

After a couple of days exploring Greenville, it was time to head home. With me, the adventure doesn't end until I'm back in my own living room, so as we approached Knoxville at lunchtime, I got out the laptop for some quick on-the-go research. Creamery Park Grille kept coming up as a local favorite, just a couple of miles away from the interstate. One exit and a short drive later and we were walking in the door. It's a very small but quaint restaurant. Patrons write their names and number in their party on a chalkboard near the entrance, and are then seated as available. Everything we ordered was definitely fresh-made and top quality. I had a ham & cheddar melt, but it arrived with a sugar glaze dip that made it go from good to Wow in one bite. The triple grilled cheese ranked highly, up in the range of my own home cooked favorite. Served with lunch were small scones, which didn't last long with my mother & I devouring them. During the summer I usually make at least one pass through Knoxville, and I'm putting this on my list of places well worth seeking out again.

(Be aware the grille is located in a two-story building, with no accessibility to the top floor beyond a pretty long staircase. Those with bad knees or trouble climbing stairs will want to request street level seating.)

Small Chain Pizza Goodness

While I'm not always the advocate of chain restaurants, Il Vicino in Clayton, Missouri (the St. Louis area) falls in that short list of exceptions. With around eight locations total, this is definitely worth a stop for lunch or dinner.
In our search for something nearby our hotel on a Sunday evening, the concierge suggested we put this one on the list to consider. Thank you concierge! While it starts with ordering at a counter, the service after is very good and the menu varied enough to please. The focus is primarily on made-to-order pizzas, with pastas, sandwiches, soups and salads also on the list. The roasted garlic tomato soup was some of the best I've had, however the Minestrone did seem to contain about every veggie they could find chopped into large hunks. (I prefer a smaller, more easily consumed diced version of veggies in soup, but that's just me.)
Then there was the pizza. Ranking as probably one of the top five pizzas I've had, to say it's good is not really fair. It starts with a wood oven baked thin crust. Topped with a variety of choices, but the one I chose had roasted red peppers. Ordinarily I avoid any peppers on pizza because most chefs simply dice up a red pepper and toss it raw onto the pizza. It comes out crunchy, and I don't care for the texture. The only things that should crunch on a pizza are a really crisp thin crust or bacon. Beyond that, it should be spicy, ooey, gooey goodness. So when I ordered it without the peppers and it arrived decorated in red strips I was apprehensive. Thankfully I gave it a try. Red pepper, with all that rich flavor and none of the offensive raw crunch. Yes! Oh, it had some other toppings too including chicken, fontina cheese and sun dried tomatoes. All in all, a mighty fine pie.
Across the table from me, my husband had pretty noteworthy pizza. The sausage on his pizza was fantastic, probably some of the best I've had anywhere.
Il Vicino has a small corner cafe appeal, it's cozy yet a reasonable choice for a small family to dine. It's one of the few places that reminds me of restaurants in Italy, minus the long-aged feel that seems just natural to all the eateries there. Give it a few hundred years and they'll be right at home. In the mean time, I hope they don't change the recipes!

Italy Stop #4 : Florence (Firenze)

Of all the places we visited, Florence is the one place I could visit for an extended time. In Rome, there's so many famous historical things to see and all the hustle of a major city blended into one. Pisa has one big albeit crooked bell tower and the charm of a smaller town. Pompeii, well it's Pompeii, and it's a phenomenal site in itself. Florence is still different. It's a small city, with lots of great food, markets, shopping and the like all within an easy walk. The people are friendly and it is more of what I suppose I would have expected of a European city, if I had really any expectations formed in my mind. The touches of great artists over the centuries grace the architecture. It's beautiful, relaxing and probably my favorite city of the entire trip. I did make a stop to see Michaelangelo's statue David, as well as the cathedral that plays host to the tomb of Machiavelli, Galileo, Michaelangelo and other higher ups in the Catholic world. The Grand Hotel Mediterraneo, our hotel in Florence, had a unique touch in the room; they provided a nice map with two marked routes for those guests who like to walk or run for exercise. It is attached to a string and has a flat pocket to hold a room key snug while running. Despite mostly rainy weather, I caught one morning that was only slightly drizzling and took advantage of the map. Just to run along the banks of the Arno river with the morning traffic bustling by was a wonderful experience I won't soon forget.

We did spend one night in Venice, and while I can say I've been there, I'm not in a rush to go back. The narrow foot-traffic only streets were interesting, and the few shops that were open had quite the variety of goods from the latest in haute couture to the downright quirky. It was easy to get lost in the maze of shops and streets. Admittedly it was near the end of my trip and I was pretty exhausted.

One thing did stand out, I had the single best lasagna I've ever had in my life at a local eatery in Venice. It left me rethinking my own recipe; actually the whole trip has me starting completely over with a new take on Italian dishes. As much as I aim to find the local restaurants when traveling, sometimes it's difficult to do. That wasn't the case in Italy. I had McDonald's one time, and even then it was a menu item they don't serve in the US.

Overall I am very glad I made the trip to Italy. It was everything I couldn't begin to expect and more. Being surrounded by history at every turn is a different feeling than I've experienced anywhere else in my travels. As I've told a few friends, here in the US things are considered "old" at 200 years and gain a "wow" factor by being closer to 300 years old. In Italy however, it requires adding an extra zero to that number to get even the slightest nod. Realizing just how much we have and yet haven't changed as humans in that 2000 (or more) years provides a perspective that just can't be gained anywhere here in the US. At least not anywhere I've traveled, yet.