Day 6 - Nashville to Florence, AL

It was back on the road today, we packed up early and waved goodbye to our wee air bnb. Our first stop was the famous Loveless Cafe for their famous breakfast (seriously,  look at their Wikipedia). The Loveless Cafe was about 30 minutes out of town and the drive passed millions of big southern-style mansions. The cafe used to have a motel and the motel rooms are now converted into shops round the cafe. It's famous for its biscuits (the theme of the holiday?) and they were the best we've had yet. As soon as we arrived they put warm biscuits on the table with homemade jams. Amazing! We ate these before we'd even ordered our breakfast.

Choosing what to have was very difficult but I settled on the mixed biscuit platter for those who can't decide. I had one with bacon, one sausage, one fried chicken and one with fried green tomato and pimento cheese - and it came with hashbrown casserole! In my defence the biscuits are pretty small and I did take about half of it away. K got raisin bread french toast which was really good but she regretted her choice, she just wanted more biscuits. Weirdly while we were eating breakfast the couple from New York that we met yesterday that warned us that we might see dodgy things in the South walked in. We chatted to them for a while after we finished eating which was really nice. K and I both bought a t shirt in the gift shop when we left. We also got a wee face in hole done! Yaaass!

Back on the road and we hit the Natchez Trace Parkway. The whole road is 444 miles long and goes all the way to Natchez in Mississippi but we were only doing about 110 to Florence in Northern Alabama. Even though we did have a destination in mind the journey wasnt just a way from getting from a to b. The road itself is a state park and a 50 miles an hour speed limit. There isn't many roads off of it so people only really drive it to drive it not to get somewhere. We had a handy guide that told you all the stops and their mile markers. There was a stop every couple of miles, walks, waterfalls, viewpoints,  sites of historical interest etc. There is also great wildlife by the road since it is so quiet. There were wild turkeys by the road side a lot (they are big!),  millions of birds of prey circling overhead and we kept seeing wee tortoises crossing the road. Our favourite stop was a waterfall where we walked down a paved, but steep, path to the bottom - it was beautiful! The road was super quiet and most of the time we couldn't see other cars and we had most of the stops to ourselves.

At one point we had to come off the road for a detour and cos it isn't well connected we had to drive for 17 miles and when we came back on we were only 3 miles further down the road! The detour was pretty cool though,  properly rural with random tiny churches, taxidermy shops and barns everywhere. Eventually we crossed over the state line into Alabama and after about 10 more miles we had to leave the Natchez Trace behind. I would love to do the whole thing one day.

Our next stop was the small town of Florence which we added to our trip because there is a Frank Lloyd Wright house here. We headed straight for the Rosenbaum House and luckily a tour was just about to start. It was a great tour round the house and the guide actually knew the Rosenbaums so there was a lot of inside info. The guide was great but had the thickest accent I've ever heard!

It was about 4pm by this point and we hadn't had lunch due to the massive breakfast at 9am. We weren't ready to eat but it was roasting so we headed to the downtown and Trowbridge's ice cream parlour. It was a lovely old fashioned place and clearly a popular haunt with locals. I had a cherry sundae and k had a peanut butter malt. Once we had cooled down we went a walk round the town, it is a proper "small town America"  downtown like you would see in a film. It seemed really lovely and had some great buildings.

We decided to check into our hotel after that and to have a bit of a chill night to prepare for memphis tomorrow. Our room for tonight is massive with a sofa as well as the 2 giant beds so it's a good one for relaxing in. There is a guest laundry in the hotel so we decided to wash some clothes while we're here. As I'm delicate we went to target to buy some non-bio but as it's America they only had massive bottles for about a tenner. I also wanted some more suncream but they didn't have any of that either. K did get a cute tshirt though. Luckily there was a Walmart near by and we managed to get what we needed in there.

For dinner we went to a southern chicken tender chain called zaxby's. I read about it in a buzzfeed listicle about a year ago that was "best regional chains" and we've been a bit obsessed with it ever since. The main reason for K's obsession is that they sell still-warm freshly cooked crisps with ranch dip. I got the standard meal which is 4 chicken tenders, chips, texas toast, slaw and a drink for about $8, K got her crisps and a mini meal (3 tenders, chips and texas toast). They had one of those drinks machines like 5 Guys and Pizza Hut but this being America they had even more choices. I had ginger ale with added lime flavour, a delight! The dinner was good but was way too much, K didn't even finish her crisps!

We're back in the hotel now and we successfully did some laundry so you may see some familiar outfits back in circulation - or not.

Massive drive in the morning before we even get to Memphis so we should try and get an early night (it's 2217 just now so not crazy early).  I might put on some American TV, maybe fox news so I can get brainwashed.