For the five nights I was in Chattanooga for a convention, I stayed at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, built from the old city railroad station.
Or at least that’s what you’re led to believe. In fact, none of the rooms are in the old station. There are rows of old passenger cars lined up on the tracks in what used to be the train shed, and many of these have been turned into hotel rooms.
And a lonely caboose along the parking lot of Hotel 3, way in the back.
And there are three separate buildings that appear to have been designed by the architect who designed East German prisons — these buildings were ugly. Our rooms (mine and my coworkers’) were in Hotel 3, way, way in the back.
The rooms were, to put it bluntly, spartan. Some of my coworkers had issues with the cleanliness of their rooms. I had none with my room (if you discount the mold all around the bathroom), but it did have one quirk. The water temperature in my shower went from just a bit too cold to scalding hot every 20 seconds or so. Oddly enough, the courtyard outside my window contained what looked like a very nice swimming pool.
For no reason I could ascertain, this hook sat in the middle of the parking lot at the hotel.
The coolest part of the building was the sign on the roof.
It lit up — or parts of it did, anyway — at night.
The lobby was impressive, although it was rather empty of furniture and people.
