New Year in Nashville
Is any trip worth a 10 hour drive to get there and a 10 hour drive to get back? In the UK I would have probably said ‘Where could you possibly be going to need to drive that sort of distance?’ but here in America if you can do the drive in one day then it is close enough. So, I spent a day, two days before New Year’s Eve in a car with one of my best friends, her parents and her sister. Yes, three grown up ‘kids’ in the backseat of a family car… for 10 hours. We made a couple of stops but the journey was long and filled with music and naps. All of this to reach the Capital City of Country Music and boy was it worth it.
After driving all day we arrived at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Central Nashville around 4pm. Fortunately, me and Mary had our own room with a view of Nashville that was grotty and charming. It was full of construction sites and lit up with beautiful lights in the night time. We all left for Central Nashville in the evening to get dinner at a brilliant bar called Rippy’s. There were two floors with two different bands and we ordered some really tasty bar food: barbeque sandwiches and chicken fingers. Every bar on the street had one or two bands playing a large variety of country music including pop song covers in the country music style all the way to traditional bluegrass. The atmosphere was amazing with bright lights and people from all over the country. After dinner we went to a very famous bar called Tootsies where we had drinks and danced a little while into the evening. The band there was really talented and offered a variety of original and cover songs by alternating a female lead singer and a male lead singer.
The next day we spent the morning at the Patsy Cline museum which was really lovely and interestingly curated. It had a reconstruction of her living and dining room as well as clothes that she ordered to be designed and were completed after her death. There were home videos and records of all the songs she sang as well as photos from photo and wedding albums that she kept. The museum was small and had a beautiful insight into the life of Patsy Cline and her family. Following this museum, Mary and I went to the Country Music Hall of Fame. This was a huge collection of country music memorabilia from the past and the present. The museum easily took us five hours at which point we were hungry and exhausted. The museum had posters, musical instruments and even Elvis Presley’s car. There were also a number of interactive exhibits and child friendly areas which even I enjoyed. There was also the official hall of fame which had the plaques of all the people that had been inducted as well as a giant needle like structure in the centre. The hall was large and also had a wishing well/ waterfall situation as you exited the room and went down the stairs. You could easily spend a whole day there and the interactive and non- interactive parts mesh well together. The only negative was that the flow of the museum wasn’t very clear and with so many people it was difficult to do things in the ‘proper order’.
After the museums we went to buy cowboy boots, yes official verified cowboy boots. I wanted a pair that would be a statement and I could really use as an icon for my trip. I either wanted them to have a picture or be a really bright colour and I really wanted them to be comfortable (at the very least wearable for extended periods of time). I ended up buying a brown pair, calf high, with pictures of moons, stars and a cactus and coyote. They were really unique and the price tag definitely supported that but if I only ever buy one pair I am glad it was this pair. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was that the soles were smooth so wearing them out and about easily erodes the soles. However, you don’t have to wash them and if they do get wet then you can air dry them and they will be good as new. After we picked these up, I wore them to a bar with Mary and then we met up with her sister for dinner at a sports bar. The food and service weren’t that good but the place had it’s own brewery where they made ciders so that was fun.
That evening Mary and I went to wander around Nashville’s historical capital. We saw the capital building as well as the courthouse and other monuments and then as we walked downtown it started to pour with rain. Of course, this happened on a day when it was unseasonably warm and we only had fleeces on. We made it back to the hotel soaked through.
New Year’s Eve was very low key. We slept in, watched the Virginia Tech game and then went to the Gaylord for a very late lunch. I had hoped I would have seen more of Nashville but the Gaylord was a massive resort which had restaurants and a full arboretum surrounded by hotel rooms and shops. They had pools with wave machines and slides. The place was massive and fully booked. Overall, it was an overwhelming place and we waited for 2 hours to be seated and served at another sports bar which was very clearly understaffed. The food was good and afterwards we drove back to get ready for the New Year’s concert which we went to at around 7pm.
There were so many people at the park for the New Year Celebration that we had to stand about 70 people back from the stage and that was considered really close. The evening was warm and with the number of people all around us it was downright toasty. The only problem was that the ground was a bog and you had to practically swim to the standing area there was so much rain water. The concert included a number of artists which were a contrast to the usual country music although Keith Urban (The true modern country music hero) was front and centre of the whole affair. We even had a live stream to New York. After the music note drop and various celebratory rounds of applause we managed to wade out of the park and back to the hotel room where I went straight to sleep as it was going to be a 7am wake up to drive back to Virginia.
Overall, Nashville was a whirlwind as much as Christmas was and I had a great time with Mary. I would definitely recommend, and I would definitely go back. Next year anyone?
