This was my first time to Nashville and to my dismay, I discovered there are no shuttle buses from the airport to the hotels.
I’m such a spoiled traveler, I think by buying a round trip ticket to any destination gives me the right to have shuttle service to and from hotels without renting a car. This time I need to find alternate transportation.
After finding all the suitcases and gathering them, I went to the service desk to find any kind of transportation. The travelers-aid desk clerk suggested I take a cab to the hotel or rent a car. Renting a car to have it sit at the hotel for three days seems like a waste of money, so I called the cab company. I know I have a travel budget, but normally it’s exhausted the first 6 months of the year.
I arranged with the taxi service and to my surprise a limo appears to take me to the hotel. A bit presumptuous, but I’ll suffer, somebody has.
I let the driver know where I need to be and before I finished the sentence he says: “No way, lady, I’m not taking you to that part of town, this hotel rents by the hour and you don’t look the kind”. I told him I was meeting another lady there and she was waiting for me, so I had no choice. He finally agreed to drive me, with the condition he would wait for me in case of trouble or if I had the wrong hotel.
Incredibly, he was right. It couldn’t have been worse. The hotel was under renovation and all the streets were being torn down for repairs. He agreed to leave me there and gave me his card in case I needed to leave in a hurry.
I thought to have a bite to eat while waiting for the local sales rep to show up; I was informed lunch ended at 2 p.m. and here it was 3 p.m. and there was no food available, but there was some soup left over from lunch and the waitress would be glad to serve me a bowl.
The rep finally arrived and apologized for giving me directions to the wrong hotel, but without reservations anywhere else in town we were forced to stay at this flea-bag hotel. We gathered our belongings, checked into the room and were set for the evening.
After dinner and a few glasses of wine, we returned to our rooms. About 2 a.m. without warning, the blaring fire alarm wakes me up and I rush to the windows to see what was going on. The loudspeaker was screaming unintelligible words which I thought meant to say we needed to leave our rooms immediately. There were fire trucks surrounding the building along with ambulances and police cars.
I’m in my pajamas; no way am I going out this door without proper clothes or without make up. I wait a few minutes, touch all the walls in the room and after finding them cold, I go back to bed. It turned out to be a false alarm, after all the noise.
My phone starts ringing as soon as I doze off and it’s the rep calling because she cannot go back to sleep now; she wants to go out and have a drink. “Dream on, I tell her, because I’m not going out the door of this flea-bag, at this hour of the morning, fearing I may be confused as some of the other guests”, I said.
The next day, after the harrowing night, we were falling asleep during our sales presentations. No rest for the wicked, my grandma used to say.