Nashville

Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is a city that I would compare to Portland in size and the way it is laid out. There are rivers that surround the city on several sides and it’s a bit confusing to find your way around, but after a couple of trips back and forth we got the hang of it in spite of the fog. The fog was a bummer, because we really couldn’t see much. Nashville would be a place to visit for a week or two actually, there’s a lot to see there. We settled for checking out the beautiful urban park downtown that houses a perfect replica of the Parthenon in Greece, called….the Parthenon. It was awe inspiring, actually, with a huge statue of Athena that was covered in gold leaf in the temple that was also a replica of what the historians believe that the original statue looked like. Reminded me a lot of the huge Buddha that we saw in Thailand, the reclining Buddha, and tempted me to ponder humankind’s love of those big religious images. They do create some interesting internal responses in me, for whatever reason, I have no idea.

After walking the foggy but truly love park we drove downtown to Broadway, parked on the street, kayaks and all, and went walking. Music poured into the streets from the bars, even on an early Saturday afternoon. It was Nashville’s honky tonk row. I saw a great looking building, and kept taking photos of it for no reason other than it looked so wonderful. We then dropped into the Stage saloon where Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and a bunch of others have played and had an Irish Coffee and listened to a country band sing a song they had written called “Livin’ on a Tip Jar on Broadway”, while they passed the tip jar. It was an experience. We ambled on down the road and back to the car to go home and get ready for our evening out.

Evening was the classic tradition for Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry, and Mo got tickets for us that included the bus ride into town so we didn’t have to drive it. The Grand Ole Opry has moved out of downtown Nashville to a place called Opryland, with a big resort and a new fancy venue that holds a lot more people, but this month it is being held instead at the old location in downtown Nashville called the Ryman Theater. To our laughter, turns out the Ryman was the building that I kept taking photos of earlier. So we were tickled to be in the historic theater seeing the classic show that was also being televised for the CMT channel. Instead of just music and such, we had continuous commercial interruptions throughout the show, which made it feel pretty campy, but the whole thing was a great experience anyway.

Most of the people on the program were not that famous, at least not people we were familiar with, and there were a few new ones that we hadn’t heard of either, but we had fun anyway. Just glad to say that we did it at least.