Introduction: An Anniversary Trip to Nashville and Asheville

Mrs. ATX Jetsetter and I are off this week for a quick anniversary getaway to Nashville, TN followed by a wedding celebration for some friends in Asheville, NC. With two major transatlantic trips scheduled for this summer, along with more wedding trips than I can count, we didn’t want to do anything too crazy for our first anniversary weekend. After looking at our schedules, we figured that Nashville would be a good location. It was only a few hours away from a wedding we needed to attend and Mrs. ATX Jetsetter had never been. Nashville was one of my favorite US cities, though I haven’t been in five years, so I’m excited to go back.

Instead of flying home between our anniversary weekend and the wedding, I used the opportunity to plan a few days with my parents at their house just outside of Asheville. Thanks to an awesome corporate discount code, we were able to get a one way car rental from Avis for around $200 per week, so our road trip was on!

Booking Flights

We cooked this plan up at brunch one day and were pleasantly surprised to find that Delta had some extremely cheap fares that worked with our schedule. We managed to book a one way ticket AUS-ATL-BNA for less than $200 per person in Comfort+.

For our return, we needed to get back in time for Mrs. ATX Jetsetter’s brother’s graduation which gave us less flexibility with our schedule. We didn’t have as great of a deal as our outbound, but still managed to book AVL-ATL-AUS for less than $250 per person in Economy with Delta.

Booking Hotels

After booking our dirt cheap flights to Nashville, I was shocked when I logged on to Marriott.com and saw the hotel prices. I still haven’t figured out what, but something must be happening in Nashville as even standard hotels were going for over $500 per night. We settled on the Aloft Nashville West End, which is far from luxurious, but we weren’t planning to spend much time in the room and just needed a place near the action to sleep.

In Asheville hotel prices were also expensive, though not as bad as Nashville. It appears that the rest of the country has finally found out about Western North Carolina. We booked a room at the Renaissance Asheville Downtown which was close to the action as well as many of the venues associated with the wedding weekend.