Adventures in Pigeon Forge, TN

I thought I would try a different way of posting. I thought I would tell everyone what I did in one big post, then do reviews on particular things in later posts.

I flew out of NY on Sunday evening and after a stopover in DC landed in Knoxville around 9:45 at night. I stayed at the Airport Hilton, which was a good move since the airport and probably the city was dead at that hour of night. I don't even know if I would have been able to get a rental car.

Monday morning I picked up my rental car around 8:00 and drove to Pigeon Forge. I decided since this was going to be the only day when the weather was supposed to be nice that I would Zorb and go to Dollywood. First, I Zorbed, which was tons of fun, then I went to Dollywood. The timing worked out well since Zorb opened at 9am and Dollywood at 10am. I stayed at Dollywood until 4:30-5:00 and went back to Zorb since the guy forgot to give me my CD with the pictures on it. After that I checked into my hotel, Comfort Inn. I rested for a while since I was exhausted from all the fun I had been having. I decided then to go for a drive to Gattlinburg, a nice little town 5 miles south of Pigeon Forge. I didn't do much more then just walk around and check out a couple shops, but it felt good to be out and about and seeing things.

After that I decided it was time for some shopping in Pigeon Forge, I tried one of the outlet centers, but it was lame so I went to the Christmas shops. I did get myself and ornament for my Christmas tree. Back at the hotel I opted for a quick dinner at Denny's. It was actually one of the better Denny's I've been to, and then took a dip in the hot tub, ahhhhhh.

The following morning I was heading to Knoxville but decided to take one more roll down the Zorbing hill. And what kind of trip would it have been if I didn't go to the outlets? I stopped at the Tanger outlets and they were very good, a nice selection of stores. I was also able to get myself a belt and a new pair of sunglasses, both things I had forgotten to bring on the trip. I did buy myself a new wallet too, I was at the outlets so obviously I needed to buy something that was just a good deal. At this point I noticed one of the benefits of only using a carry-on, I couldn't buy much. If I had a full size suitcase I probably would have bought more stuff, but since I had limited space I found myself being very careful as to what I bought, this probably saved me a bunch of money.

What does the future hold in blog posts? Reviews of Pigeon Forge, Gattlinburg, Hotel reviews, My experience Zorbing and at Dollywood.

Language Barriers - Shopping at the grocery store

While traveling through Scandinavia we often bought food at grocery stores and would have picnic lunches, an inexpensive way to eat and healthier then eating fast food. It's also sometimes the only way to eat when there are no rest stops which was often the case in Northern Scandinavia. Scandinavians typically speak very good English, however when they label their food they use the local language, this is a problem when you're trying to buy your picnic lunch. The juice that had a name that sounded like apple was actually Orange Juice. And how does one distinguish between the different meats? Ask a local, though you may have to cluck to help them distinguish what the word chicken is. Ok, I never actually had to cluck, but I was never 100% sure that I was eating chicken instead of some other animal. I suppose that's part of the adventure of traveling - both figuring out what is what, and eating whatever the locals eat.

Buying groceries

One great piece of advice I've always heard is to shop where the locals do. It's something kind of subtle, but can tell you about how others live and how it's different from how you live.

When I was in Scandinavia we went to a lot of grocery stores. Many were pretty typical - food, fruits, veggies, drinks, snacks. Then every now and then we would end up in a massive grocery store ya know the ones with lumber departments, clothing and all sorts of non-grocery stuff for sale. Wow, lumber, that was pretty impressive. It was so bizarre, if we had more time I probably could have done a lot of damage there, not on the lumber but on the myriad of other offerings. It threw me off a bit too, I would have expected Scandinavia to be more of a local store kinda place, not the type of place with big giant huge super stores.

Here in the US the closest thing to that would be a Wal-Mart - but groceries are just a section, it's not a grocery stores. Long Island and NYC don't have great Wal-Mart stores though. I hear in the mid-west they are HUGE and have pretty much anything you could ever need in them. I'm going to have to see one of these places one of these days.

Russia was totally different though. We didn't stop at many grocery stores, and I'm not totally sure if the grocery type places were typical grocery stores or just strange left overs from Communism. Everything in the store is behind a glass case and one of the workers gets each item that you need. The selection in the stores was poor, and the girl who I saw doing her nails behind the counter made me wonder about the sanitary issues. I opted to just get candy at that store. I guess when your country has communism and you need to create jobs for everyone, a labor intensive grocery store makes sense.

Belarus was a little different. The grocery store where I went reminded me of what a grocery store in the 70's or 80's in the US would have been like. It just didn't seem as sophisticated as grocery stores are today. The produce was weighed by a person in the produce section, then she would put a little sticker with the price on it on the produce. At the check out the person entered the prices for each item manually. I had exchanged 5 euro, but the prices were so cheap that I couldn't spend that much even when trying to spend the money. I probably spent about 2 euro worth on food and had a large bill, probably the equivalent of 3.50 euro. The girl could barely give me change, and I screwed up her drawer so much that she couldn't give change to my friend behind me. I was with 2 other girls and we played shuffle the money around so that we could each get our change for the groceries.

Shopping can be a great way to see how people really live, and it can help you eat on the cheap too. Next time you're away from home do some shopping with the locals, you might be surprised at what you find.