What 15723 DialAFlight clients thought of USA

Always great service.

Excellent customer service from start to finish!

We were in Florida when Hurricane Ian hit. Philip was fantastic at keeping in touch, answering all my emails and keeping us informed about flight options. A much needed voice of calm amid the madness.

Really helpful when my flight was cancelled due to Hurricane Ian. Resolved the issue quickly and well

A great help when problems happened -always there on the end of the phone. 10 out of 10

I am always recommending this company. Will always go the extra mile !

Service and support from Ewan was great throughout. Ewan Warrin and Lee were incredibly supportive when we were impacted by Hurricane Ian and if it had not been for their help in arranging alternative flights we would stil be in Orlando.

I dealt mostly with Jim and he was very professional at his job. I would definitely use again

Neil Frost was brilliant in rearranging our flight.

Felt really looked after by Riley from start to finish. We had an amazing time. Would use your services again

All our flights and reservations worked out perfectly. We even managed to escape hurricane Ian.

Again Ivor came up trumps

Awesome customer service from Austin and his team yet again

Great experience. Easy, and questions quickly answered by phone… that funny old communication tool.

Every email, every phone call was professional, courteous and helpful. Troy was our agent and I appreciate all he did this time and before

As always, excellent service from the first phone call to returning from our trip. Thanks Jerry and we’ll be calling to book with you again soon.

Fabulous staff kept me totally informed about my flight - great experience as first time solo. Thanks everyone

Always a pleasure to deal with a totally professional company - will only use you in future

COVID USA entry requirements were embedded in gov .UK links, but were easily overlooked. I had my vaccination cards with me but these were not accepted and I nearly didn’t get on the plane.

The level of service we received from Declan and his colleagues was superb as always and we really liked the hotel that he recommended for us in New York. We look forward to booking with you again in the future.

Excellent service and excellent communication. We will use again

Would recommend your service to others

Excellent service

Excellent service again from Teddy. This is my 3rd booking to the USA in the last 12 months and looking forward to booking again. Your staff answer the phone within seconds which is amazing when you hear the stories of people being on the phone for hours. Keep up the great service.

Thank you Adam, once again our trip was organised perfectly.

Excellent service, always available on phone and superb price

Superb start to finish

Danny looked after us brilliantly

Thank you so much Samuel - you never let me down and always find me the best holidays and deals

Helpful when arranging my flights and very good follow up to ensure everything was in order regarding visas

Magical Music City

Mark Palmer hits the high notes in the country music capital of Nashville

Much of country music (well, all of it really) is about unrequited love, loss and the twang of hope deferred. Yet Nashville, the epicentre of the whole caboodle, seems like one of the happiest places in the world.

'Love dies hard,' says a sign sandwiched between bottles of Jack Daniel's at the Mellow Mushroom, where a four-person band is half-way through a respectable version of The Doors' Riders On The Storm.

A bucket sits at the edge of the stage. It gets passed round for tips or you drop some cash into it when requesting a particular song.

Country artist Margo Price, performs at the Basement East in East Nashville

LOST IN MUSIC
And it's all about the songs. That's the refrain you hear again and again, as songwriters are drawn to Nashville like moths to the proverbial flame. Every waiter or waitress is a would-be songwriter, just as their equivalents in New York are 'resting' actors.

The difference here is that the pain of not making it doesn't seem to matter quite so much because the whole genre is geared towards disappointment. And there's irony in Nashville. One bar on Broadway is called Rock Bottom, where an acoustic guitarist is playing to an audience of four. 'Thanks, anyway,' says his T-shirt.

'Take the long way home,' creeps into most songs – metaphorically if not literally. 'The best is yet to come'. 'I've still got a lot of leaving to do' and so on.

Mellow Mushroom: a popular music venue pizza joint with a rooftop patio

At Tin Pan South's Listening Room, where four singer-songwriters perch on stools, taking it in turn to perform, we are advised in one chorus not to 'hit the panic button because everything's going to be all right'. Is it really? Live music plays everywhere. There's a man singing in the lobby of the Westin hotel, his open guitar case filled with CDs no-one wants to buy, and it's the same story in shops, restaurants, even some banks and at the airport.

Music City, as it's known, is hitting the high notes like never before. Along with country, rock, folk and Americana, the sound of construction reverberates, as a mix of creatives and techies become the city's new settlers.

'Safer than LA, cheaper than New York and cooler than San Francisco,' a barman tells me at Tequila Cowboy.

Printers Alley in downtown Nashville famous for it's nightlife

BEST SPOTS TO VISIT
There's lots to do, too. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is always packed, and from here you can join a tour of the Historic RCA Studio B near Music Row – and you should. It's where more than 35,000 songs were recorded by the likes of Elvis, Jim Reeves, Roy Orbison, Chet Atkins and the Everly Brothers.

Better still is the Tour Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum, which celebrates the session musicians as well as the stars themselves. The mother church of country music is the Ryman Auditorium, home of the original Grand Ole Opry, the world's longest running live radio show.

To have played here (Patsy Cline, Dolly 'heart of an artist, spirit of a minister' Parton, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen et al) is to have reached deity status, with the audience sitting in walnut pews dating back to when the hall was a religious tabernacle.

But Nashville's buzz is about the present as much as the past (and the fact there's now a direct British Airways flight from London can only help). Taylor Swift was discovered at the exquisitely down at heel, but wonderful, Bluebird Cafe (good luck getting tickets; there's only room for 90 people), and it might have been the bourbon but I'm sure we find the new Oasis at Tin Roof Broadway as dawn breaks.

You can even sit in on a recording session. We do this at Imagine Recordings on Music Row – overseen by Grammy-winning producer Steve Fishell, where Natalie Stovall (who reached the 'playoffs' in the U.S. version of The Voice) is cutting her new single. 'You sound a bit like Emmylou Harris,' I tell her at the end of the session. I think she likes that.

Live music isn't hard to come by in Nashville

NIGHT LIFE HOW-TO
The honky-tonk bars open at 10am. There's no entry fee. Walk in and don't like what you hear? Walk out and try next door. But even when it's bad, it's good.

I wander into one establishment and two women are on stage murdering Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's so dreadful that it's strangely compelling. How do you think they got this gig?' I ask a man with a hipster beard sucking on a bottle of Yazoo Pilsner. 'They didn't,' he says. 'This is a karaoke bar.'

First published in the Daily Mail - July 2018

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