We ended 2025 with one last trip. Afterall, it was a year of travel. You can read about all of the adventures here: https://twomoodyjones.com/2025/12/31/2025-a-year-of-memorable-travels/ We visited some pretty cool places in 2025.
If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that we like to visit Chattanooga. It is about 2 hours from where we live, and there are always things to do. We went up on Friday, December 26, after Jeff got off work. I was off that Friday and Monday to use my last vacation days of the year. This trip, we stayed in a townhome in St. Elmo that we found on VRBO. It was a 3-story townhome with the master on the bottom floor, a small living room, dining area, and kitchen on the 2nd floor, and a den on the 3rd floor with a balcony. When we walked in the door to the kitchen, it smelled like pizza. We smelled pizza on the 2nd floor the entire weekend, which made us crave pizza the whole time.
Saturday we started the day with a trip to Vinterest Antiques in Hixson right outside Chattanooga. Then we grabbed PIZZA at Old Chicago Pizza. We had pepperoni rolls and split a small four slice cheese pizza.
After lunch, we headed to downtown Chattanooga to the Northshore, it was time for ice cream! We got a flight of six different flavors, maple shortbread, chocolate orange, Dasher’s delight, gingersnap, white chocolate peppermint and eggnog. This is the best way to try multiple flavors when you can’t deThen we walked in a couple of stores and to Coolidge Park and down to the river. The walking bridge is still closed for renovations. They have a walkway along the car bridge, but we just stayed in the Northshore area.
Saturday night we did a Christmas trolley tour that took us to the Festive Forest tree display, the zoo for the lights, and then around town for other Christmas lights. We caught the trolley at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
Funny story, I went to the restroom before we got on the trolley. Walking back to the lobby, I passed a woman with a pet. The guy in front of me looked at it and then turned around and asked me if I saw that. He was convinced it was an opossum. I told him maybe it was a ferret. We had a good laugh trying to figure out what we just saw. Jeff thought I had found someone that I knew. But it was just two strangers trying to figure out what they had just seen. His wife came out and told us that it was a ferret and that it was in the bathroom walking all over the sink while the owner washed her hands. So while we were waiting, we saw her walk across the lobby with it in her arms and into a restaurant. GUESS WHAT!!!! It ended up on the trolley with us. She was the wife of the trolley driver. She let anyone hold it that wanted to. We were not one of those people.
Our first stop was a park downtown that was full of trees decorated by businesses, individuals, and other organizations. We didn’t have time to see them all. Our driver said that he had one in the park. Some people found it and noticed that his gloves were missing. He said that one of the homeless in the area might have needed them in the cold.
Next stop was across town to the Chattanooga Zoo for the Asian Lantern Festival.
The last stop was a building downtown that had the windows decorated.
Then it was back to the Chattanooga Choo Choo. We didn’t eat before and found that most of the places were already closed or closing soon. But we did see a place at the Choo Choo called Stir. This was not on our list, but ended up being really good. We were able to be seated quickly at the bar. We started with the Parmesan White Truffle Fries. Jeff had a burger and cheese grits. I had a delicious steak with sweet potato fries.
Sunday was another fun-filled day. We had lunch at Taco Mamacita back at the Northshore. They have remodeled since our last visit. After lunch, we had to find an auto parts store to get new wipers. I knew I needed them replaced; well, we turned them on and they came apart, so we knew we had to replace them as we were supposed to have rain on our way home. We found an O’Reilly in Red Bank. After we took care of that, we went to an antique store that we had passed called Dirty Jane’s Antiques. We knew we had to stop when we saw the name. We saw lots of neat items, but nothing that had to come home with us.
Before heading back to St. Elmo to rest, we stopped in at Clumpie’s on Market Street. We then went back and rested until it was time to head up to Rock City for the light display. It’s been years since we had been to Rock City; it was a different experience at night.
We grabbed another late dinner. We went to 1885 Grill in St. Elmo. They seated us right away, but we had to wait for our waiter. We found out that it was just his second day and he was struggling, so we gave him grace. We didn’t have anywhere to be. We went with a lighter dinner. Jeff had mac and cheese, grit cake and a baked potato, and I had a salad.
Monday morning we got up really early and stopped at Greg’s in Chickamauga, GA for breakfast before heading home. It was our first visit to their new location. The food was as good as it has been every time we’ve stopped in.
Loved being able to end the year with a quick, fun-filled weekend doing things we hadn’t done in the past!
