Look Out Nashville Here We Come!

The man of my dreams (MOMD) loves Nashville.  He had been talking about taking me there almost from the first moment we met.  We had planned to go for his birthday which followed close on the heels of Christmas.  We made reservations, We watched the weather, SNOW!  Now, I live in the south.  We don't really get snow.  But this year, we have SNOW.  Not much compared to those on the other side of the Mason/Dixon line but none-the-less, we have snow.  The roads are closed and travel is suspended.  We call and change our reservations.  We postponed a couple of weeks.  We are preparing to go, and watch the weather to see what to expect. 'cause the weatherman said the "S" word again.  (Sometimes I think they do that to boost ratings or they get a kick back from the bread and milk companies).  But this time, sure 'nuff,  SNOW.  We change our reservations once again.  The hotel is nice about it and we plan for the week before Valentine's.  We really don't want to change plans again but the weather appears to be going back into the deep freeze.  No snow this time but really freezing temperatures.  Too cold for walking outside all day!  We try one more time to move our reservation to the next weekend.  MOMD's daughter said, " Maybe God doesn't want you to go to Nashville."  We laughed about it but..... So, February 11th we make our plans.  SNOW once again is predicted but only in the night and only a little with no icing to shut down the roads.  The day before we are to leave there is a beautiful snow fall at night.  It was so pretty that we went out and played in it.  Nothing on the roads.  So far so good.  The next morning, this is what I saw when I got up!

It was the perfect snow, pretty, but the sun was out and the roads were clear!  We are heading to Nashville! Hooray!
It was a lovely drive up.  Snow on everything but pleasant temperatures and sunny!  I was so excited to finally be going. I was looking forward to seeing my country favorites singing in the honky tonks!  I was looking forward to the good food MOMD has talked about for months and I was especially looking forward to just getting away and enjoying time with MOMD!
Nashville didn't disappoint me.  The city was beautiful, friendly and fun!  We walked and ate and had a really great time!  Here is a picture posting of some of the things we saw.  The only thing that we didn't see were my favorite country music stars.  They were all away at some silly event called the Grammy Awards.  Go figure.  They must not have heard that I was coming to town.  The first thing we did was check in and eat!  We had great barbecue at an establishment call Jack's.  It was delish!!!!  Then we walked up town to book a tour of the city.  We wandered in a few shops and peeked in a few honky tonks waiting for our tour to start.  It was a walking tour of Nashville!  Our tour guide was great.  She made me feel like I was getting a personal tour from Cousin Jill.  She was sooo bubbly and friendly and told us some fun stories about the city.  We were touring with a family from Australia.  Boy, I'm sure they were in culture shock.  I have a strong southern drawl as did the tour guide and everyone else we stopped and talked to. I wonder what they thought...  We went through the Ryman Auditorium, that was my favorite part, and some other old buildings with great stories.  The tour guide told us that Elvis was booed off the stage at the Ryman and never returned.  They are trying to make up for that somehow because Elvis was everywhere. From the sidewalks in from of stores and restaurants to the top of buildings. It was like looking for Waldo!!!!  Only Elvis was everywhere.

After our walking tour, for an hour or so, we took a bus tour.  That took us further out on the other side of town.  Nashville has so much history!  It was fascinating hearing all the stories.  We saw several things that we wanted to go back and explore on our own.  One of them was the Capital building and the Bicentennial park.  We decided to go there in the morning.  We wanted to see Nashville's night life and have a good dinner.  The tour guide told us to take a romantic stroll across the walking bridge at night.  We decided to do that.  It was covered in snow and very beautiful.  We stopped over the water and tried to imagine what it must have been like when the Riverboats were parked along the docks and people like Doc Holiday frequented them to gamble and drink.  We were the only ones on the bridge.  It was very romantic and we took our own pictures.

Aren't we cute!  Those earmuffs weren't attractive but they were practical!  We hung out in a saloon later and walked back to our hotel.    The next morning we got up and walked to the Capital.  It was only two blocks....then we walked to the Bicentennial Park.  That was huge!  This is what we saw....

The sun rising over the beautiful Capital building.

The monument to the Civil War.  This is also a representation of my relationship with MOMD.  I am a southern girl and he is a dang Yankee!!!  But mostly he is the man of my dreams!

We also stopped at the Korean War monument in honor of my dad who served proudly in the Army during the Korean War.  I lost my dad two years ago and I still miss him every day!  (I love and miss you Daddy.)

I also wanted to see the Parthenon.  I don't think I am getting to Greece any time soon so this was as close as I was going to get.  It was impressive.  The original Nashville Parthenon was first created as a celebration to 100 years as a city.  It fell into ruin and was later rebuilt.  It was stunning to see.

They say everything is bigger in Texas but they haven't see the Parthenon in Nashville.  The building itself is amazing.  The detail is incredible.  They tried to make it authentic to the original ,though that one had fallen into ruin.  The golden statue of Athena took my breath away.  I wasn't expecting it when I walked into the upstairs room.  There was so much attention to detail.  A scale model was made of the statues that were going on the Frieze of the building, to get a perspective of the height and arrangement of the people to fit in the are across the top.  I was impressed with the overall presence of the structure.  There were these humongous Bronze doors that  weighed 7 tons but slid with ease in the front and back of the building.  You can see the actual size of these by comparing them to the people standing beside them.
We had one last stop at the Country Music Hall of Fame before heading home.  It was amazing seeing all the memorabelia they had. We parked our car and walked to Margaritaville, a new restaurant , to eat lunch.  It was fabulous!!!

That concludes our wonderful trip to Nashville.  I hope you get to see it for yourself soon!  I highly recommend it!  Thanks Nashville for a great experience!  If you have been to Nashville please leave a comment and share your stories.  I wanted to take the ghost tour but didn't have the guts or the time.  Maybe next time.