Nashville in three days

Day 1

Touched down on Nashville International Airport (BNA) @ 9:00am.  Walked on over to the Thrifty Car Rental for a car and began our incredible journey to Goodlettsville, a suburb of Nashville.                                                                                                                                          

10:00am

We arrived at Crestwood Suites Hotel and Checked in. The hotel was tolerable but a bit too far from downtown Nashville. Oh well i guess you get what you pay for; we booked the cheapest hotel with the best reviews.  Not a big deal, it's only used for sleeping anyhow.

11:00am

First things first, we visited the Parthenon and snapped pictures of everything,  We'er pretty sure we sprayed everything with camera.  We were blown away by this massive architecture...  Let’s not forget about the park itself, the Parthenon sits right smack in the middle of Centennial park.  This park had it all, beutiful ponds, trees, statues and gardens full of every imaginable blooming flower under the sun.   We were actually looking forward in visiting the inside of the Parthenon but couldn’t due to it being closed on Sundays, so venturing in to town we went. 

11:45

After burning some fuel driving around downtown a while, we decided to hunt down Fort Nashborough.  I ended up taking a wrong turn on 2^nd Ave.  (1-way Street).  Nobody got hurt, although the oncoming traffic did manage to kick start the adrenaline.  The wife is will never let me forget this (HEHE).

12:00

We found the perfect parking spot on 1^st Ave. right in front of Fort Nashborough; YES, out came our camera again.  Such an incredible thing, history. 

1:00pm

Our venturing around downtown eventually led us to hunting down some Nashvillian famous BBQ, but we ended up eating at a local Outback (Go figure).  After our filling of the bellys, we continued to walk around downtown visiting this and that. 

8:00pm 

Once daylight fell we thought we'ed head back to the Parthenon to snap some night-time pictures, this place never seized to amaze us. It looked as breath-taking at night as it did during the daytime.

[Due to the Super-early flight from Brownsville TX at 4:30am (had to check-in at 3:30) we ended up going to sleep early Sunday night.]

Day 2

10:30am

Drove over to historic Franklin city and walked her downtown.  This place is phenomenal, great little place to go and visit.  The stores are a little on the pricey side, though every local store seemed to have photos of big-time celebs in them, so I guess that made them expensive? (Who Knows)  We've made a habit of sending post cards to ourselves from places we visit (scrapbook) so on to the visitors center and post office we went.  We had decided to do  bit of Geo-Caching around the city, but too many mugglers seemed to be lurking around caches, so we were forced to pass it up (oh well).

12:30ish  or so--

Once Franklin city was out of our to-do list we headed over to our initial waypoint, The Carnton Plantation.  We had just missed the tour when we got there so we went ahead and paid the $5 each to walk around the place.  If you enjoy a bit of history like we do then this is a must stop for you.  (Great Book too by the way, The Widow of the South)

1:45pm

Again we decided to eat locally so we ate at a local Olive Garden. (Sarcasm in the air)  I don't know, it's just so tempting.

3:30pm

Let’s see, we couldn't just visit Nashville and not stop at the Hermitage (old hickory’s house).  The Hermitage (located in Old Hickory,TN) pretty much took the cake for us.  The history behind this place is so incredible, 1000 acres of pure US History.  We ended up using up about 6gigs worth of pictures (raw format) here.  Unfortunately we showed up pretty late and were forced to leave at 6pm.  (Don’t forget to see the General’s Tomb)

6:00pm

Later we drove back to the hotel and passed out for about an hour, the temperature here is too hot!!!   The thermometer on the car read 116, the local bank read 109, and my Casio Pathfinder read 108f; I really don’t know which one had the right reading, but ultimately it all BOILED down to one word, HOT!!!

7:00pm

We had planned to go bar hopping in downtown Nashville; In our minds we had already decided to visit every posible bar down town, or at least 2nd and 3rd Ave.  We wanted to get an itty-bitty taste of Night-Life in Downtown Nashville. So off we went, we parked on south 4th and commerce then headed over to see what was a brewing.  We hopped on over to our first location, Coyote Ugly.  We had a few drinks (more like 1), the place was too cool, reminded me of the movie (I think they only dance to the Charlie Daniels song).  After about 1/2 hour we decided to hop on over to the Wild Horse Saloon; We just had to visit the big bars first.  Let me tell you, this place had a live band and line dancers, we just couldn’t make ourselves leave.  By the time we did decided to leave it past 11pm, too late in my opinion so we headed back to the hotel after that.

Day 3

9am

We got up late Tuesday morning and drove over to Opryland.   Cruised around the mall and spotted other activites we had planned to visit like the Opry land house, museum and of course the General Jackson! 

11am

We had purchased tickets for the General Jackson paddle boat prior to going on the trip, so we boarded the boat and began our little  3 hour cruise.   This definitely was a must...  They cruised us up the Cumberland River all the way to 2nd street and back down.  The city line of downtown Nashville on this boat is beyond imaginable.

The trip was exiting; when we purchased the tickets we were mostly interested on the outside tour, we figured why take the curise from inside?  Bottom line we were forced to enjoy Nashville's scorching 106 degree heat for 3 hours (oh well).  It was too early in the day to drink Margaritas (like most people were doing) so we decided to buy a soda, this only set us back about 3 dollars and change.  The drink included free refills for the remainder of the cruise (as long as you kept your glass, not bad). 

 2pm

After we reached land again we went in to the mall to cool off a bit (Thank God for Air-Condition). Once cooled off, the Local Restuarant Bug began bitting again, we ended up eating at a Local Macaroni Grill.  We left the restaurant with a full stomach then waddled on over to the Grand Ole Opry.   We decided to try our luck over at the ticket booth for some Trace Atkins tickets, rumor had it he would be performing that night, but to no avail,  they were Sold Out. (Like if there were really going to be tickets availble, oh well)  We went over to the Museum across the Opry House and did the tour.  I can't really say that i'm too familiar with country music but the wife seems to know a slew of performers on  display.  By the time we did the museum and the mall we were all tuckered out. 

5pm

We headed back to the Hotel and began packing for the 4am flight the next day( had to check in at 3am again).  Although we skipped a few "Planned Activites" like visiting the Jack Daniel's Distillery and Belle Mead plantation we have no regrets.  And so the million dollar question arises, Would we come back and visit Nashville again?  You betcha’!!