Visited Knoxville Tennessee for the first time. I’ve always driven through it, but never actually took the time to visit there for some reason. One of our friends was having her whitecoat ceremony there and asked us to come, so we said yes and made it a little vacation! The 6 hour drive wasn’t too bad. My husband and I had the opportunity to see a bunch of pretty sights as we drove through the Appalachian mountains. This area was always my favorite to drive through.

Anyway, we stayed in a nice little Air BnB called Opportunity Knox. This was my first time staying in an Air BnB and I can say this place was definitely worth it. The owner has everything set up like it was its own hotel. Such great hospitality! I was even impressed by the huge coffee bar. We all definitely took advantage of that the whole week we were there.

I’m not sure why, but I guess I completely forgot that the University of Tennessee was in Knoxville. So our friend took us there and we took a tour of the majority of campus. I couldn’t believe how big it was! This is coming from a girl who graduated from the University of Central Missouri and it was literally half the size of this campus. You can bet I went through the apparel stores and bought a couple things. I couldn’t believe it when I saw they had a whole Lululemon section with University of Tennessee branding. We tried to explore as much of the campus as we could despite the miserable heat we were walking through that day.

We explored downtown Knoxville a few times. We ate a majority of our dinners down this street and even went to this super cool Rooftop bar. My favorite place to eat was The Kennedy. The vibes of that place was just so cool that I think we ate there a few times.

I’ll never forget Knoxville because I had probably one of my most embarrassing moments there – one that I will definitely never forget because my husband loves to tell the story to all our friends.

After dinner one evening, we decided to go get a little treat in downtown Knoxville and stopped at an ice cream shop. I got this Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream that was so beautifully made I had to take a picture of it. Anyway, we left the shop and started walking down the sidewalk back to our car. I always like to be playful with my husband so I took a little dollop of whipped cream and wiped it on his nose, laughing and hurrying away. I turned back so I could see my whipped cream masterpiece and started walking backwards. He doesn’t hesitate to take revenge and smears a little whipped cream on the side of my face, so I started laughing and backed away.

What I didn’t see was that behind me were those public scooters that are left on sidewalks for people to use..and my feet found them before I knew they were there. So I fell backwards over these scooters, off the sidewalk, and into the street…where there was a beautiful BMW parked. As soon as my butt landed on the street, ice cream flew everywhere – all over me, all over the street…and all over the wheels of this BMW.

Of course my husband and our friends panicked because they thought I knocked myself unconscious on this BMW, but were relieved to see me laughing. My husband helped me up and we all couldn’t believe how much of a wreck I looked. I had cake and strawberry pieces in my hair, and it was smeared all over my clothes. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die because downtown Knoxville was definitely busy around that time and I know a lot of people saw me in one of my not-so-finest moments.

I guess I almost had a moment with a beautiful stranger before my husband intervened. I guess I didn’t see it but a shirtless runner came down behind me when I fell to try and rescue me, but he kept running after he saw my husband was handling the situation.

“You didn’t see him?” my husband asked.

“No?!”

“Yeah he was shirtless and everything.”

“You mean to tell me I could’ve had a moment with a beautiful, shirtless stranger and my husband ruined it? Damn”

We all got a good laugh out of that one. So if we ever decided to recount our adventures from Knoxville, instead of talking about the campus, the food, or even the casino we went to..my husband never fails to immediately jump to this story that I know he’ll never let me live down.