Our flight home from Barcelona was somewhat fraught–there was a potential issue with the aircraft, and our pilot wanted to make sure that it was resolved before he embarked on a transatlantic flight. The delay took over an hour to resolve (thankfully we had Uno to help pass the time while we sat at the airport), but our pilot tried to make up time with an aggressive flight path to get us back to Newark and make up that time. We actually did land close to originally scheduled, but unfortunately, we had to wait on a damn gate, which meant we were going to miss our connecting Amtrak train back to Baltimore. I canceled our tickets while we taxied as Michael booked a one-way rental car for us. Understandably I was…concerned about our ability to stay awake for a drive after having been awake for so long already, so I made sure I had some articles cued up to read aloud to keep us both engaged on the drive home.
What kept us alert through most of New Jersey into Delaware was me reading a Buzzfeed piece on how Nashville has evolved into a top non-Vegas bachelorette party destination, which to its credit was long and riveting enough to keep us going for a good long time. If you had told me later that night while we were getting dinner nearby during Thursday Night Football that we’d be going to Nashville a little over a year later, I would have laughed and then asked you if we would still be arguing whether Joe Flacco was, in fact, elite.*
What brought us to Nashville was yet another conference for Michael, but we were able to get some solid exploration time together before things got serious. Naturally, I made myself a map of fun of places to check out, and once we checked into our hotel and ditched our bags we set off to get our bearings and get to know the town.
Given that we were going to be there during the week, I didn’t have high expectations that we’d see any “bach” action, but lo and behold–within five minutes of leaving the hotel we ran into a party riding on Pedal Taverns and having a grand old time. I saw a few more of these on Wednesday–that seems to be the earliest day people will come to spend a long weekend here–but what amused me the most was that I kept seeing groups of Boomer-aged women doing their own tourist thing for most of the week.
What did I think of Nashville? Well, it certainly is country music-heavy, but because so much of it is live, I actually was able to appreciate it. You could even hear decent music coming out of the McHonky Tonks owned by bro-country musicians, though that wasn’t enough to draw me into any of them. We were content to hang out at Robert’s Western World and Layla’s, two places that feel both authentic and timeless, and even the music at Central Honky Tonk were solid (and the place has pretty great views of Southern Broadway and its copious neon signage). Just be sure to have cash to tip your band, especially if you make a request.
The city is larger than just its music scene, though–we trekked over to Bicentennial Park on an overcast morning, walked through their interactive history of the state of Tennessee, and then checked out their farmer’s market and market house. The former was winding down for the season so there wasn’t much to see, but the market house itself was filled with a nice variety of food stalls and made an ideal spot to get some coffee. I’d really like to go back to this park in warmer weather to see the fountains on in force, but even as-is it was a nice place to take a long walk and work up an appetite.
Nashville doesn’t have my favorite food scene, but it’s definitely a solid one–because so many of the chefs are transplants from all over the country, the options are much more diverse than you’d expect. While it’s easy to find classic Southern fare, we actually didn’t eat much of it while we were there. We feasted on everything from the barbecue at Martin’s BBQ to small plates at Black Rabbit and Skull’s Rainbow Room to pub-like fare at Downtown Sporting Club. (I’m going to start trying to recreate one of the Black Rabbit dishes now that the weather has turned cooler.) You can even sidle up to a restored Woolworth lunch counter in all of its mid-century modern glory and have a pretty damn tasty bowl of tomato bisque.
The significance of restoring the lunch counter at Woolworth on Fifth is not simply one of aesthetics or reviving a long-dead retail brand, however. Lunch counters were a common site for sit-ins in Nashville during the Civil Rights movement, and the Nashville Public Library has an excellent permanent exhibit on the city’s role during that time, including a lunch counter recreation that lists out the rules of conduct of protesters as you walk around the circle. Much like the plaques commemorating sit-ins and other protests in Louisville, it’s a frank and powerful reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go to ensure true equality and justice for all.
I mainly stuck to the downtown area of the city for a couple of reasons: I didn’t want to rideshare by myself to places I wasn’t terribly interested in, and I twisted my ankle halfway through the trip which limited my range of motion. (It didn’t stop me entirely, of course, but as a result of walking around, I’m still icing it regularly.) The downtown area, though, gave me lots of places to go to like Printer’s Alley, some local art galleries, and the Ryman Auditorium which was a few blocks from our hotel. (I also snuck into the lobby men’s room at the Hermitage Hotel because I had heard that it was really pretty inside, and it absolutely was!)
Touring the Ryman was actually really cool, as the space is teeny-tiny for a concert hall, and therefore feels super-intimate as you walk around. There are memorabilia all over the space, from iconic outfits worn by the likes of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton to concert posters from nearby Hatch Show Print. While it served as the home of the Grand Ole Opry from the 40s until 1973, it’s been home to all kinds of shows, ranging from Ali Wong to Ray Charles to Coldplay. It also has a badass feminist history to it as the person who booked the acts for over fifty years there was a single mother and widow Lula Naff.
Would I go back to Nashville? Absolutely–so long as the airfare and hotel prices are reasonable. There’s a good amount of the city I have yet to see and places I’d like to return to, which is always a good sign of a fun destination. This is why I ended up going back to Miami for the third time this year a week later. But that is another post.
*A long-running joke regarding the Baltimore Ravens was whether then-star quarterback Joe Flacco was an elite quarterback or not because he helped lead them to a Superbowl win but then sank into a period of great mediocrity in the intervening years. The night we got back from Spain, we went to our local biergarten to try and get onto local time and we didn’t realize that the Ravens were playing that night, so we were surrounded by Ravens fans including one guy who wore a tee-shirt with a stylized portrait of Flacco with “ELITE” in all capitals underneath it. We couldn’t stop giggling at it.
The Manhattan [food] Project 