After a cousin girl trip fell through, Shelley and I decided to make our own trip happen! This sister trip was a first for us but certainly not the last! We considered Chicago, Nashville and New Orleans, but Nashville was the winner! I typically have a touch of anxiety leading up to trips, but for whatever reason, I was ALL IN for this one and couldn't wait!
David generously dropped us off at the airport and picked us up. Thanks, Uber David!
Why not take the airport taxi to your gate?! I think we reached the same speeds on some rides at Dollywood later that week!
It's happening!!!! I watched "Walk the Line", a movie about Johnny Cash, during the flight. Gotta get all ready for his museum!
Abbey shared one of her Circus Peanuts. Seriously, this might be the strangest thing about Abbey, haha! I always wondered who on earth would buy those things!!
Shelley didn't approve.
Our flight left on Wednesday at 5:40pm and we arrived around 11pm if I remember correctly. But with the time change it was only a 3 hour flight. Easy peasy!
Shelley rented the car (a minivan- woot woot) and became the sole driver because we didn't want to pay the $50 extra it cost to add additional drivers. Poor Shelley! In hindsight, we should have paid it to add one more person. It just ended up being quite a lot of driving responsibility for Shell Bell.
We started out by laughing A LOT over the fact that 4 grown adults couldn't figure out how to turn off the overhead lights while the car was on!! Seriously, all the buttons got pushed, doors got reclosed and still the lights wouldn't turn off! The teenaged worker was no help, but random lady passing by figured it out! Thanks, random lady!! This was the first of MANY hospitable southern people we were impressed by!
It was about a 20 minute drive south to our quaint AirBnb! Hotels in the city be pricy!
I love that we did this because it just FELT more... I don't know... southern staying here! Can you say AUTHENTIC shiplap?!
Butterscotch and fresh flowers on the kitchen table. Yesss.
This place took me back to our house in Buffalo and I was all sorts of reminiscing! The creaky floors, the old fashioned door knobs, the air vents in the floor instead of ceiling. Even the musty smells.
Shelley and I figured since we were womb-mates, we could share the queen and Abbey and Marcie could have their own beds. :) Or maybe it would have made more sense to let the twins have the twin beds... I don't know! ;) At any rate, the first night became memorable because just after I had fallen asleep, Shelley heard a serial killer outside our bedroom window. (Surely, the dirty fingernail kind, full of sperm) She alerted the other two and suddenly the neighborhood watch had formed, nervously speculating what should be done. One kitchen knife later and me barely able to rouse any concern I just remember drifting back off thinking, "If there IS someone out there, he can just kill me."
Wouldn't you know it... we woke the next morning with all our limbs. :)
HOWEVER, bright and early the next day we now we had a piercing, fire alarm going off, alerting us of a carbon monoxide problem. *face palm*. The home owner couldn't be reached so we opened all the windows and doors and surmised that if we hadn't died in our sleep, and no one had a headache, we'd probably be OK.
Friendly neighbors fixing a fence came over to snap our pic.
We all spent hours researching the best things to do and see in Nashville and here was my list! We had 3 1/2 days and our work cut out for us!
First stop, just 2 miles up the street, was the famous Loveless Cafe! We had read from multiple sources that the wait time is often 2 hours, so I drove down at 7am to put our name on the list while everyone else got ready. The hostess just looked at me strange and said they could seat us right away.
Huh. Well, sweet! I drove back with the good news and we were eating breakfast within the hour!
Complimentary biscuits to start. Mmm hmmm!
Abbey got waffles but the rest of us shared a BBQ pork benedict, biscuits and gravy and cheesy grits. I wasn't that impressed by the pork, but those grits... take me now!!
They have several little souvenir shops that we sent my mom a postcard at. It's also where I got Tanner's souvenir onsie and a Nashville t-shirt for me!
Our plan was to drive into Nashville and start with the Trolley city tour but when we were on the highway we saw signs for the Belle Meade plantation. We figured why not hit that up first! It was 7 miles off the highway and turned out that they didn't have any tours starting for 1 1/2 hours. Bug. But we were there, so we walked around looking at the slave house, dairy house, and stables to pass the time. Inside the mansion you couldn't take any pictures... lame... but it was restored to look as it did in the early 1900's. Bell Meade was known as being the premier horse breeding farm of its day. I guess all winners of the Kentucky Derby can trace their lines back to this farm from some cool horse named Iroquis. It was mildy interesting. I liked looking around and learning a few things, but would have been fine if it wasn't quite so long.
Our horse lover got to pose in the stables. :)
It ended with a wine tasting, so we went next door for homemade fudge tasting instead and ice cream cones.
Driving around Nashville took all our breath away! The houses!!! The land! It was so green and beautiful. Unique architecture, white pillars, red doors, black shutters, manicured bushes and exposed brick. I was drooling and coveting while cursing Gilbert's ugly, brown stucco garbage houses. (Not a real good activity for someone who's in the Gilbert housing market right now.)
Also, a church building on every corner! Every street. Heck, 4 to a street!
Ahhhh- yeah!
Seeing the cityscape for the first time! We had all been watching the TV show, Nashville, as silly prep for this trip and it did the trick! I was loving by all the scenes I kept seeing from the show.
Every article. Every list. Every website said that Mas Tacos was a MUST.
Who am I to argue with taco recommendations?!
I got the fried avocado and pulled pork tacos. The avocado was my fav.
So here's the thing. The tacos were yummy.
Buuuut. We're from Arizona where yummy tacos are a dime a dozen. Not saying we don't appreciate good Mexican food, but getting it in Nashville didn't exactly feel like a treat.
From there, we finally got to downtown Nashville and parked. The city tour was sold out, so we booked it for tomorrow.
We were ready for some museums! Got out our handy dandy google maps that we didn't know how to read and started walking.
But they were all closing at 5pm and we were just too late. Boo!
Hatch Show Print was a no go.
Struck out at Country Music Hall of Fame.
Ryman Auditorium was closed for a show that night.
What the heck, Nashsville?!
Finally, we discovered that the Johnny Cash museum was open til 6pm.
Since I had just watched Walk the Line, I found the museum to be pretty interesting. Probably wouldn't have cared much otherwise though.
As we wandered around, we started to get a feel for where everything was located.
I guess this is dubbed the Batman tower.
We were hoping to find some of those bikes you can rent, but nothing was available. So we just walked across the John Seigenthaler pedestrian bridge that spans the Cumberland river. Some big game was starting so there were lots of jerseys everywhere!
Don't worry, this was just us gawking because Abbey swore there was a naked girl in the window of a skyscraper, haha. It's fine. We're not pervs. There was definitely a girl who seemed to be in the middle of a photo shoot. It APPEARED she could POSSIBLY be naked??? I mean, it was really far away. No details. But we laughed pretty hard anyway.
We spent our evening on Broadway! The Nashville version of the Vegas strip!
There was an authentic boot store we looked around in but ain't none of us dropping $500+ on boots that day!
It was only a Thursday night, but this place got hoppin'! Maybe whatever big game was going on, contributed. We weren't really sure which bar to choose, but figured we couldn't go wrong with Tootsies. It had three levels with a band playing on each one. Actually, two bands on the ground level! We squished our way in, turning down offers for drinks and hunkered down in a corner. I honestly felt so weird without something in my hands that I took out my water bottle to hold. I hoped that would deter any more bartenders from trying to get me a beer, too. We had fun listening, singing along and dancing! Lots of bachelorette parties going on! After a while we went into the Tin Roof bar to get some dinner. We peeked in a few others but they were so packed we gave up. There were a few souvenir shops we browsed in. The most scantily clad person we saw happened to be the most normal looking, older woman until you looked at her chest and realized her see-through shirt was covering metallic, flower pasties. What.the.heck? Her husband seemed as normal as could be too. People are strange.
A chocolate store caught our eye, where Abbey bought a caramel apple, then the rest of us got yummy ice cream at another little shop. Our tired feet and mom eyes needed rest so we called it in by 11pm. Hashtag: wildandcrazymormons
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