Honeymoon Part 2

Our plans were to:
- wake up & leave the hotel by 8:30
-get to gatlinburg & eat at the pancake pantry by 9
-go to ripley's aquarium
-go shopping.

It pretty much didn't happen like that AT ALL.

Our alarm went off at 8 and we were both still so exhausted from the long drive we hit snooze.
We finally got up and out around 10.
We got alllllllllllll the way to Gatlinburg, only to find out it costs a whole $8 to park.
Call me crazy, but I wasn't about to pay to park [I'm apparently an idiot].
So, we drove about 5 miles away to the welcome center, parked [for free], paid $2 for a trolly pass, and rode the trolly back into town.

We had only been on the trolly like literally 2 minutes when the car in front of us lost control and crashed into the mountain. Since our driver saw the whole thing, we had to sit and wait for the police, so he could fill out a witness statement.

By the time we actually got back into town, it was almost noon. I couldn't believe we had lost half of our day! We decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch before hitting up the attractions.
We got seated at the Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love table, and had the sweetest waitress ever.
It was really good! And active duty military gets 15% off their ticket.
After lunch, we headed over to the Ripley's Aquarium. They have this great deal, where you can pick which attractions you want to go to, and the more you do, the bigger the discount. It was pretty awesome. But, if you're active duty military, you can go to all 8 of the attractions, for an 85% discount!! That is ridiculously amazing, and is why we got to do as much as we did.
Here are a few shots from the aquarium:

The aquarium was huge, and amazing. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to go through it, and we didn't really want to leave, but there was so much left for us to do.

Next, we stopped by the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum.
I used to watch this show religiously, and I have been to the Ripley's in St. Augustine, so I knew I was going to enjoy it.

Here are a few things that we saw:


britney spears, painted on cow dung.

the tallest man...ever.

sushi made from lint


And they had a dog tag machine there, so of course we had to have one made.

Those were pretty much the highlights of our day.......
we went to a motion theater? It pretty much sucked.
I mean, the actual 'movies' were really corny, but all I could concentrate on was NOT getting whip lash.

The last thing we decided to do was go to the Hollywood Car Museum, which was neat, but TOTALLY not worth the amount of money we spent on it.




By this time, we were starving, so we went to Subway. We just took our time eating and relaxing, since we had been walking all day. And when we finally decided to leave, it was close to 7. We walk over to the trolly stop, and guess what..............the trolly stopped running at FREAKIN 6 pm! Although, when we asked the ladies at the welcome center, they said it ran until midnight during peak season.

We had to end up calling a cab, and guess what? It cost us a whole $8 to get from subway to the welcome center. We learned our lesson! Just drive and pay to park, instead of having to call a taxi.