Howdy Ya'll From Nashville!!

It was an easy 2 1/2-ish hour drive to Nashville. Cruised in here amid kinda overcast skies but still hot as all get out and checked into our hotel. Walked up to Broadway in downtown and found some dinner at Jack's BBQ...kind of a dive but real good hometown Southern food. Then went and found the Lipstick Lounge where they were having Karaoke night! Now, these people could sing! I mean, Nashville is the music capital of the world, and these cats were givin' it to us! It was so much fun.

On Friday we got up and headed out for a day of sightseeing. First we headed up to Centennial Park to see the Parthenon. Really. There is an exact full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Greece in the middle of this Park in Nashville. The structure was originally built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. It was to capitalize on Nashville being known as the "Athens of the South". In the mid-2os when the structure started to crumble the city decided to rebuild it inside and out exactly like the original. Now it houses an art museum inside, complete with a 42-foot tall gold-plated statue of the goddess Athena. The whole thing is really quite the site. Guess now we can check Athens off our vacation list, since we've done that :)

And it just so happened that Vanderbilt University is located right across the street from the park so we drove through campus and Rhett got to take pictures of another stadium :)

We also went to Bicentennial Park, which has beautiful greenspaces and all kinds of plaques about Tennessee history. It also has a large outdoor amphitheater with a beautiful view right up to the state capital.

Last night we headed back up to Broadway and had dinner at Bailey's Pub. We sat up on the second floor balcony with a cool breeze and great view of the neon strip. After that we headed out with some new friends to enjoy the local music scene, and there is shortage of places to hear live music in this city. We hopped from the Cadillac Ranch to The Stage on Broadway to Roberts and on and on up and down Broadway listening to people and bands trying to make it big. Fun night!