020·7962·9933
A fabulous trip. Great accommodation and flights and car hire all worked out well.
I felt I was treated as a valued customer at all times. Very impressed with the support and advice I received from Connor. Will not hesitate to use your company in the future
Used DialAFlight for the last 8 years or so. Always happy with service provided and flights offered at best price
Great service from start to finish and always available when needed.
When I book my flights with Finn, my journey goes like clockwork.
Nick was great in booking flights and car hire
As always, Roray provided a first class service. I will be in touch to book again for next year's holiday
We travel regularly with DialAFlight and have made several recommendations to family and friends. A huge thank you to Morgan and her team - you make it all so easy for us!
Thanks Oscar, especially all the updates as Virgin Atlantic seemed to be changing the return schedule weekly. As I’ve come to expect - great service.
Keiran is a great agent
Professional, friendly help given always. Proactive and not reactive. Efficient and geared to my needs. I can rely on you. Thank you.
Courtesy call prior to journey was a nice touch.
Absolutely superb
Brilliant as usual
Excellent as always!
All good but missed connection flight which was a bit stressful. Not your fault though.
Vinnie was fabulous
Everything was fine.
I rang a few times and always had a helpful response. We also had all our boarding passes emailed to us on the outward journey, very helpful
Perfect service as always. Highly recommended.
For an older person not good with the internet speaking to someone reassured me and took away the stress of planning my trip
Nice to have a personal approach in this electronic era!
Ralph dealt brilliantly with the issue of a cancelled flight.
Everything went very well
Chris is always very helpful
Another excellent holiday from DialAFlight, my No.1 travel agent for trips to the USA
Great communication all the way through the process
Lily was amazing and so was Blair. Have recommended you guys to my friends
Very helpful service - will use for next flight!
All ran smoothly as usual.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
Amazingly, it is simple old-fashioned service that sets us apart from other travel firms. And yes, we really do answer the phone within 5 seconds!
Check out the reviews on Trustpilot and the word ‘service’ appears again and again. And you’ll find many reviews from customers saying they wasted hours trying to plan a holiday themselves before calling us - often on the advice of a friend - only to find we could offer numerous options not available online, which also saved them money.
Our team of 300 travel managers has been arranging tailor-made holidays for almost 40 years and we believe no one does it better. Judge for yourself.
Not quite what you're looking for? We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements
Airport Lounges from £25
Once you’re through security leave the crowds, kids and chaos behind you with a visit to one of our comfortable airport lounges.
All offer complimentary food, drinks, wifi and newspapers with some also including Fastrack through security. Prices from £25.
Use our speedy private transfer service to avoid the stress of finding your way out of the airport terminal and looking for a taxi or bus on arrival.
With our meet and greet service, our driver will meet you in the arrivals hall. They will monitor flight arrival times giving you peace of mind that someone will be waiting for you with a name board even if your flight is late.
They will then assist you with your luggage and organise a private transfer directly to your hotel - there’s no waiting around for other passengers for shared transfers!
So no queues, no delays and less stress.
Let us extend the personalised service of your booking into your holiday with great prices on business class flights ready to add a touch of class to your trip.
Take the stress out of travelling with a host of wonderful perks on offer from priority check-in and premium lounge access to chauffeur service and fine in-flight dining, plus the supreme comfort of a fully-reclining seat.
Call us to see how much you could save on Business Class flights.
All customers can take advantage of exclusive premium rates we’ve negotiated for our portfolio of business clients. We’ll maintain your preferred airline loyalty programmes and you’ll have 24/7 support wherever you are in the world.
