Many of you know that my family spent the last week evacuated from our New Orleans home due to Hurricane Gustav. We originally planned to go to Memphis, but since we were just there last summer we decided to drive a little further and explore Nashville, Tennessee.
What a wonderful city, with so much to do! No worries about hearing "I'm bored" from the kids with the jam packed days we had - a great way to take our minds off of what might be happening at home, making lemonade out of lemons :)
We started our trip with the drive from New Orleans - the further north we got, the more hills, mountains in the distance and rocky terrain on the sides of the road. This is a big deal to someone who has lived their entire life in south Louisiana, where we are as flat as flat can be :)
Our first stop was downtown Nashville, walking the streets and visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame. Designed to look like a keyboard on the outside, the Hall of Fame was a cool respite from the heat and an education in country music history for us all that tied in nicely with our visit to the Gibson showroom where you could watch guitars and mandolins being made on site.
Of course, there was the obligatory visit to the Hard Rock Cafe, so hubby could get a hat and the kids could get their Tshirts.
There was a river front music festival going on, but we were too late to attend :(
We took a day trip to Lynchburg TN, home of the Jack Daniel Distillery and toured both the distillery (very cool!) and the local town square, where we had some of the best BBQ pulled pork I've ever eaten and topped off our meal with cones from the local ice cream shop.
Who could visit Nashville without going to the Grand Ole Opry? Not us! Fortunately, we were there for the only weeknight performance of this long running, live radio show.
The audience was filled with other evacuees and we felt right at home with the opening act of Joe Newman, who played a combination of country and Cajun zydeco. It was good to hear some sounds of home! He was followed by Jean Shephard, a bluegrass band (can't remember their name, but they were terrific), Chris Young, Little Texas, Billy Currington, Little Jimmy Dickens and Bill Anderson. The time flew by and even the kids who "don't like country music" had a great time.
We couldn't leave Nashville without getting a little history lesson in as well, so we visited The Hermitage, the plantation home of the 7th U.S. President, Andrew Jackson. There is a wonderful museum to visit along with the house itself, which has many of the original furnishings since the property remained in the family until it became a museum. The grounds and garden were just beautiful and I could have stayed all day just taking photos of flowers and butterflies.
There was so much more to see and do that we are sure to visit Nashville again. Thank you to the wonderfully hospitable people that we met everywhere we went and thanks again to everyone who checked in on us and for all of your prayers for my family and city.
Lisa Heindel, New Orleans West Bank Real Estate — New Orleans West Bank Real Estate
I am glad you enjoyed Nashville! I live just north west about 60 miles and itlooks like you were busy all week-end and had a good time. I am glad the storm did not hit as hard as it could have. Best of luck Brenda :)
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Lisa, A few years ago we took the same tour except we didn't visit The Hard Rock Cafe. We did the Grand Old Opry, The Hermitage, the Jack Daniels distillery, etc. On the way up, we stopped in Memphis and toured Graceland, went downtown at night for barbeque and blues, and spent the night at the Heartbreak Hotel. Your post brought back good memories.