The Noog

So last weekend we had an impromptu getaway to Chattanooga to meet up with my Peace Corps bestie, Catherine, and her adorable son, Noah, who we had never had the pleasure of meeting before! On the way there and back we did some adventurous eating in Nashville, which I'll be covering on DWM. (We also did quite a bit of successful restauranting in the Noog, which I'll cover too.)

On one of our pit stops, I pulled up the recap of our last trip to Chattanooga three years ago on my iphone to remind the monkeys of all the fun we had. I think the general consensus was, "How on earth did we do all of that in one day?" Since we were going to have a two-year-old with us for most of the weekend, we decided to take it easy and not try to cram too many activities in.

While we waited for Catherine and Noah to arrive, we took a little boat ride on the Tennessee River. The Chattanooga Aquarium had this fancy boat made special. It went really fast and we got to hang out on the top with binoculars, so that was pretty awesome. The only downside was that it was FREEZING!


We met up with Catherine and Noah soon after. The monkeys became instant best friends with Noah and we had a lovely afternoon of strolling along both sides of Chattanooga's riverfront. We all loved the pedestrian bridge and the carousel was a huge kid pleaser. (We rode it 3 or 4 times.)


When it got dark we stopped for some pizza, then headed back to our hotel for swimming and catching up. For transportation, we rode the free electric shuttle, which turns out is the most awesome thing Noah ever saw, despite being an international world traveler. (Catherine pointed out everything on wheels to him. He is a transportation nut!)

I loved that even though I hadn't seen Catherine in three years we picked up right where we left off.