Nashville

Warning: Long post ahead with loads of pictures!

Day 1 - May 15

We arrived in Nashville the day after graduation. We flew and we had a very early flight!! We arrived there at 9am.

We got our rental car and off to play we went.

We couldn't check into our hotel until 3:00pm so we went first to the grand ole opry to see if we could do a tour. We walked around and went to the opry museum and decided to do an afternoon tour, and have lunch at the general jackson boat.



The boat went up the river and back down. They had live music and lunch. It was a fun little ride. It was relaxing and the music was great. It poured while we were on the boat too, but it felt nice because it was a hot day!




After the boat ride we went back to the opry for the tour. Before you start the tour they have a green screen and props for you to get your picture taken and then they put you "on stage". Once the tour was over you could go look at your pictures and buy them. So off we went on our merry way to the tour. Once we came to check our picture the lady pulled us aside and said she loved our picture, and asked for our permission to use our picture to advertise what you would get on a board at the opry and at the gaylord opry hotel. So our picture is going to be up at the opry for a while. lol

Here's the board at the opry.

It was so neat to see the backstage of the opry, the greenroom, the different dressing rooms, and to get on stage. It is amazing how much of country music history is in such a place.


Once we were done with the tour we checked into our hotel, and then went to pick up our all access passes at the visitors center. It poured shortly after we left, as you can tell by the clouds on the top right picture. But we took some pictures of downtown.


We then headed to the wildhorse saloon for dinner, live music, and dancing.

Tyler tried fried pickles and I had the house burger. The food was yummy. The music was amazing! Just like the boat. There's country music everywhere in Nashville.

Day 2- May 16

We woke up early and went on a sightseeing tour called Tommy's Tour. He picked us up at our hotel, took us around downtown Nashville, and showed us some of the country music stars homes.

Lower left picture is the capitol, bottom right is printer's alley.

top left is the customs house, the rest is the union station hotel.

This is inside the hotel.
The bottom left is the oldest method of transportation and the bottom right was the newest one at the time the union station was built. Obviously it is no longer a train station, and it's been restored into a hotel. It was gorgeous! One of my favorite buildings on the entire trip.

After the tour we headed off to the Belle Meade plantation. It was pouring again, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the mansion on the inside, but it was fun to see such an old home. The grounds were beautiful.



We hurried off to the Parthenon. Nashville is not only Music City USA, but it's also known as the Athens of the South. They built this replica in a park and have an Athena statue, and a museum inside of it. It's so cool how grand this is and I'm glad we went.





We tried going to the Ryman auditorium, but it was closed by the time we got there. We hurried off to the country music museum and hall of fame. We only had about an hour to browse around. We didn't really enjoy it because we're not familiar with country music history. It was pretty neat, but I think people that are older and remember those folks or are interested in country music history would enjoy it more.

Tyler and I were seriously hungry! We skipped lunch so we could do as much as possible. So we got dinner at Jack's Bar-b-que before the concert we had to go to that night.

I'm not a fan of barbque but we had to get some while in Nashville. We waited in line for a good 30 minutes to get food. The funny thing is that they had all these different sauces for you to try. We got all of them, except for one that was mayo and horseradish. Tyler's favorite sauce was the Texas one. We decided that Texas barbque is just as good as Nashville barbque.



We ran to our car and changed real quick and went to the Billy Joel/Elton John Face to Face concert. Tyler loves Billy Joel. The concert took forever!!! It was almost four hours long with no intermission. They sang together, then Elton John sang by himself for an hour, then Billy Joel sang by himself for an hour, and then they sang together again. We had pretty good seats, but the sommet center had poor sound so everything was loud! I didn't love it, and Tyler could have done without Elton John singing by himself. lol But he's glad we went so that's all that matters.



The following day we headed to Kentucky. We didn't get to do everything we wanted to in Nashville, half of our passes didn't get used so we gave them to a couple at Jacks that had just gotten to Nashville that day. We really liked Nashville. It was such a fun city, clean, music everywhere in downtown, people are so nice. I loved it! It'd be fun to go back someday with more time.

It might be a while before I get to the rest of the trip. I need to focus on NCLEX and organizing and posting these pictures took me four hours.