Nashville, TN

We arrived in Nashville at 3:30 pm on january 10^th. After figuring out the right direction we directly headed to our host's house, actually to our host's sister Ali.

After a cup of tea and cookies, Ali drove us to her sister Sarah and David's house. They are both very friendly and kind. They live a bit outside the city, so we had the opportunity to see the lovely neighborhood of Nashville. They also have a cute, funny cat: Pickles.

On january 11^th we visited the city. First of all we dropped in by the capitol and we took a guided tour. As you can see it has become a “tradition” to visit the state capitol whenever we visit the capital of a state. After that we wanted to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame museum, but lucky as we are, it was closed.

So we stopped at a country bar and listened to real good live music while eating some sandwiches. We stopped at the Hard Rock café for a desert and visited the Tennesse state museum. It's about the indians who lived in Tennesse , the first settlers and the civil war. We learned about the origin of the expression “buck” indicating the U.S dollar. Apparently, in the 1760s, hunters used to moved to the Apalacchian Mountains to hunt buck deers and sold their skin for one dollar.

It was freezing during the whole day and it was snowing lightly all the time.

During the day we tried several times to get tickets to Atlanta, but they didn't hand out any tickets as Atlanta was in a state of emergency due to the snowstorm. So we decided to take another route, skipping Atlanta and heading directly to Miami. We took ticket from Nashville, TN to Columbia, SC, passing by Knoxville, TN and Asheville, NC.

Finally our route was a bit different, always because a lot of busses couldn't start. We left Nashville at 1:30 am on the 12^th january and arrived in Knoxville at 5 am. As no busses could leave for Asheville we had to wait 7 hours at the Greyhound station. We finally could leave towards Asheville at 12 pm. Once arrived there we were told we couldn't leave for Columbia, so we stayed on the same bus and went to Winston-Salam, NC, from where we had to change bus direction Charlotte, NC.

We arrived in Charlotte at 9 pm and took tickets to Miami, FL.

All those problems with the busses were caused by the severe snowstorm which stuck mostly Atlanta. We actually didn't see lots of snow on the roads and we discovered that the south states are not used to have so much snow as the one fallen. That's also the reason why the roads weren't plowed, or took so long to be plowed, and the real problem was the un-plowed roads and not the snow itself. Kind of ridiculous for us, but understandable for them!

In some Greyhound station the red cross handed out free food, beverages and blanket for the waiting people.

After other 12 hours waiting in the station of Charlotte we finally could leave to Miami at 9 am on the 13^th january, an almost 24h long trip. We changed bus in Jacksonville, FL after 10 hours of trip. We took the last bus of this very long trip at 10:30 pm headed to our final destination, Miami, FL!! :)