The primary reason for staying in McMinnville is so that we could visit the State Capital of Tennessee, Nashville. Unfortunately I had miscalculated the distance from McMinnville to Nashville, thinking it was about 30 miles when it was a lot nearer 80 miles. Never mind we set off and it was a nice day and scenery was pleasant, rolling hills and still some autumn colour on the trees.
En route to the downtown we decided to pull off to see the Grand Ole Opry which is not very Ole at all. The Opry is situated on an entertainment complex on the outskirts of Nashville – we stopped to check if there was anything on whilst were in town. And basically there wasn’t – the famous weekly country show had moved downtown to the more historic Ryman Auditorium for the winter months. So this was our cue to move on.Nashville itself is quite a modern looking city. It had a lot less of a grungy feel than Memphis – not quite sterile but a more sanitised feel. Once parked up we decided to trudge the streets for a while and find somewhere for lunch. We set off having found a couple of recommended restaurants from our trusty “Road food” book. We stumbled upon Broadway, the main music street in Nashville, full of bars, restaurants and shops selling cowboy hats, boots and garish shirts. Every bar and restaurant has live music and we were fortunate enough to find one with something going at 11:30am in the morning – which was not too early for me at least to have a beer and watch some country. We were joined by a coach load of tourists so it was quite good atmosphere for so early in the day. The artist was clever at working the audience, particularly the older women in the crowd. Buoyed by the music and beer we went off and called in at one of the cowboy outfitters along the street – attracted in by a set of pink cowboy boots in Emily’s size. Incredibly they even stock Stetsons that fitted Mark’s large noggin.
By this time all our activity had fuelled our hunger and we set out to try and find the restaurants we had written down. Unfortunately it turned out since the book had been written and published both places had disappeared into the ether, but luckily we found a couple of stout and well fed looking business men who recommended us to a home style cooking restaurant called Caroline’s. This turned out to be a gem – very basic with food served on plastic plates – but goodness was it tasty.
For the afternoon we decided to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame. We’re not really Country Music people but whilst in Nashville it had to be done. Not knowing anything about the music or the people we chose to take the self guided audio tour. The museum part of the Hall of Fame takes you from the early roots of Country Music through to the modern day – profiling the genres of music that influenced it and the stars of the Country Music scene. Interestingly enough one of the biggest displays was set aside for Elvis Presley who was billed in his early days as a County artist – and indeed he is inducted into the Hall of Fame (stretching things a bit). The final part of the tour is the rotunda which has a plaque for each inductee, including such greats as Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell and Dolly Parton. This wasn’t as interesting a museum for us as was the Rock and Roll Hall of fame, but that is entirely due the fact that we don’t really follow Country Music.
No comments:
Post a Comment