Day 26 - Nashville, TN

We started our day in Nashville with an action plan! We were going to go to check out The Ryman Auditorium, then the Country Music Hall of Fame, followed by Centennial Park and if we had time, RCA Studio B. The plan fell apart not long after we started but for the right reasons, we ended up having a really relaxed and fun-filled day we both enjoyed. Maybe going off plan isn't too bad, every so often.

We started the day to plan visiting the Ryman. Lee had read somewhere that just the video at the start of the tour was worth the entrance fee, they were right. The video explaining the history of this building was fantastic, really well made and interesting. The Ryman was opened in 1892 initially as a place people could come to hear sermons but it grew into a major music venue and housed the Grand Ole Opry. I didn't know who the Grand Ole Opry were until the tour, it is a weekly country music and entertainment show which is on TV and on the radio. It has been around since 1925 and is an institute having hosted huge country music names and kicking off a number of careers. Its worth a look on YouTube to see what its about.

After the video, we then saw the auditorium. Although the seats are like church pews, the acoustics are amazing and given the intimacy of the venue, I bet it would be awesome to see a concert here.

Throughout the venue, there are info stations with further details on the history, the stars that have performed here (including Sam Smith, Ed Sheran and Cold Play) and memorabilia they used whilst performing on display.

After the Ryman, we both needed a drink so we stopped off at one of the bars on Broadway. This is where the plan fell apart! Broadway is similar to Bourbon Street in New Orleans and Beale Street in Memphis but its filled with Country Music rather than Jazz or Blues. The bars are all huge, often on 4 or 5 floors and usually have a roof top bar. Some bars even have live music on every floor! Out of the three cities, we agreed that this is our favourite music street. There were a lot of hen and stag parties like the other cities but the bars were so large and the street wide that it didn't feel closed in and crowded and there was no fatberg smell! There weren't any street performers like the other cities but it was so cool to sit on the roof tops and watch the hen / stag parties cruise up and down Broadway in their tractors, lorries, or multi-person bikes. The only thing that wasn't as good as the other cities was that they didn't close the road off to traffic at night but there were so many policemen constantly blowing whistles (not sure what they were blowing them for!) that we felt safe.

We both decided that we would get a better feel for Country Music staying on Broadway for the rest of the day, rather than visiting a museum, so we did!

I finally tried some Moonshine, it didn't taste as strong as I expected although I did try the Gummy Bear flavoured one so maybe the sugar was hiding the strength! Lee stayed safe and stuck to the local beers!

Since we started planning for MERTA, I have been determined to buy some cowboy boots. I was going to buy them in Texas but there are so many boot shops in Nashville, I couldn't wait! Not only did I buy one pair of lovely boots, but I also got a second! Lee also joined in, buying a pair of boots too! He was warned by the sales assistant never to wear them with shorts whilst in Texas! He wasn't overly happy with this but I'm sure they wont care what you wear when we reach California!

Whilst we were in one of the bars, we met two fellow English travelers - Ruth and Natalie. We met up with them a couple of times over the evening, we even went line dancing together (we needed to try out the new boots!). It was great to chat about travelling and to hear about their adventures in Asia (we learnt to watch out for dogs and monkeys!) and to share some good old British humor, Lee's line dancing being the funniest! Safe travels guys!

Although our sight-seeing plans didn't quite work out how we had planned initially, we still managed to see a lot of Nashville as rather than Ubering, we walked everywhere! This was another thing we liked about Nashville, everything was walkable. Here are a couple of pictures we took whilst walking around:

Neither of us can really remember the end of the night, we made it back to the hotel and according to our hotel bill the next day, we had a Microwave Pocket (pastry thing stuffed with cheese and ham) at 1am for dinner. It must have been good (or needed!) as there wasn't any left the next day!