February 10th – February 17th

Yesterday on February 16th, my sister in-law and I (plus her daughter) went exploring down Downtown Knoxville, where we visited the Sunsphere at World’s Fair Park and the art museum pretty close by. Everyone else in the house was sick with the flu, so we thought it would be better for us to go by ourselves. Since my sister Kyrsten is my mentor for this project, it helped a lot that I was able to get some alone time out with her so she could help me film the videos I needed. At one point she even had to remind me to start taking the videos and pictures because it completely slipped my mind!

After some navigation and parking problems, we arrived at the Sunsphere, where we ran into yet another problem. The elevators wouldn’t go up to the observation deck where we needed to go, so were were stuck on the third floor. After a while, a worker came in and helped us (I think he swiped his card somewhere next to the buttons but I’m not entirely sure) and we were finally able to get up to the observation deck. The view was really pretty, and we took the cutest pictures there.

• 

• 

The next place we went to was the Knoxville Museum of Art. We only spent about 30 minutes in there though because my niece was getting really fussy. It was so interesting to see the different sculptures in some of the rooms and the different mediums throughout. I never appreciated art museums before, but this time I was really interested in everything, especially the history paintings from the 18th century.

I guess there was a performance that night at the museum because on the first floor, there was a group of girls in costumes practicing their routine to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA! They looked so cool and my sister and I sung along to the song as it replayed over and over again.

There’s a balcony on the third floor that I was particularly obsessed with because of the view and the potential picture spots. I wanted to stay there forever. It was so peaceful, except for my almost two year old niece screeching. After we got some pictures there, we had to leave because it was getting close to my niece’s nap time.

• 

• 

I’m so happy there’s a downtown area only 15 minutes away from me and I’ll definitely be going back to the art museum with the rest of my family once they’re not sick anymore. I’m hoping to include a few of the videos I took yesterday in my final travel vlog, but it all depends on the length I want it to be.