My first 36 hours in Nashville!

Favorite Event: Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium

Favorite Spot: Frothy Monkey Coffee House

First Time: Staying at a B&B and visiting a new city completely on my own

Monday morning I packed up all my things and headed to the airport to fly out to Nashville. I can’t totally explain what compelled me to go to Nashville on this trip, but I just knew I had to go. I guess my pull was mainly driven by the fact that country music is one of my guilty pleasures. Growing up in a small, somewhat rural town, a lot of people listened to country. That was reason enough to hate country music, I guess. During the fall of my senior year of high school, I drove over to Colorado Springs to visit my dad and Kay, which is about a five-hour drive from Durango. For some reason, I couldn’t find any station on my XM radio that I could stand to listen to for more than a few songs. Then I switched over to “The Highway”, which is their station for new country hits. I loved that the quality of the vocals were actually something that I could appreciate and I felt like these artists had talent, which is a different breed than most of the new pop artists today. The rest of the drive I was hooked on country and my appreciation for the genre has only increased since then.

The other thing that swayed me to visit Nashville is that I always knew that I wanted to go to the Grand Ole Opry at some point in my life. Another station on my XM radio plays the Grand Ole Opry live every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday night. I had grown to enjoy the sound of it on the radio, because it’s an eclectic mix of older country artists and the newer artists. From what I could tell by listening to it on the radio, the show sounded like it would be a neat experience. Everyone said it was a must see in Nashville, since that is probably one of the top venues that has given Nashville its name in the country music industry.

I arrived Monday afternoon around 4PM and headed straight to my B&B to check in and drop off my massive amounts of luggage. By this point in the trip, I had been gone for 2 weeks already. As a side note, I packed literally enough clothes, shoes, and stuff to move anywhere on this trip. My mind wasn’t quite as clear and organized as it usually is after the morning events that led up to my departure from Boulder. Never again will I let myself take such a big bag. To put it into perspective, my bag weighs just slightly less than half of my weight. Going up and down stairs with it is quite a site to see! I was unsure about what to expect from my first B&B experience, but based on it being rated the #1 B&B in all of Nashville on TripAdvisor.com, I knew it wouldn’t be bad.

I pulled up in the taxi to a gorgeous Victorian house in a neat old neighborhood near downtown Nashville. All of the houses had either a Victorian or Bungalow feel about them, the trees were massive, and the gardens were beautiful. I walked up the stairs to a white partially wrap around patio equipped with white wicker furniture and striped blue and yellow cushions. Exactly what I was hoping to find from a Southern B&B! I walked in to find one of the Innkeepers chatting with another couple about what to do and how to get there. She was a sweet lady, but so scattered and talking a mile a minute. Her directions that she jotted down for the other couple and I were on note cards and consisted of drawings or names of landmarks for how to get where. They contained no street names, no addresses, and no phone numbers of the place. I knew that I would quickly need to get on the internet and do some of my own research about what to see in the neighborhood where I was staying.

It took no time at all to realize that I was in a pretty up and coming neighborhood. There were lots of little local businesses, restaurants, and bars within a few blocks walking distance. It didn’t hurt that I stayed so close to Belmont University as well, so there were plenty of cool college town shops spread around. I wanted to walk to a nearby coffee shop for a light dinner and to get a feel for the area. I pulled up the menu the one that was rated highest on yelp.com in the neighborhood only to find out that they had a great selection of breakfast food, salads, and sandwiches. Halfway down the sandwich menu I came across one called “The Ned” and in parenthesis they explained that it was named after Nederland, a town just up from Boulder, Colorado. I couldn’t believe that I came all the way to Nashville to find a sandwich named after the town 20 minutes away from where I live. I knew I had to go there to check it out after that, so I set out to walk the five blocks or so to the coffee house named Frothy Monkey.

I walked up to this awesome Bungalow style home that had been converted into a cute little coffee house. It was funky and comfortable inside, similar to most college town coffee shops. The girl at the counter was super friendly, like most of the people I met in Nashville, and recommended that I eat the “CalifornIA” for dinner, because it was light. It was sourdough toast that was topped with two eggs over easy, sliced avocado, sprouts and homemade salsa. It was amazingly delicious and their coffee was tasty. I had almost fallen completely in love with this shop as I sat outside on their front patio surrounded by bushes and flowers when I saw something flickering over the grass. Then I saw it again and again. To my delight, I realized it was fireflies buzzing around. They started to appear everywhere and I was like a kid in the candy store. Not growing up around fireflies, my heart literally jumps when I see them. I absolutely love them! The coffee house closed at 9PM and I headed back to the B&B. Fireflies lit my entire way home and I was ecstatic!

The next morning, I enjoyed my first B&B breakfast experience and was joined by a middle-aged couple from Albuquerque, NM and a younger couple from Pennsylvania. They were both friendly and had some advice about what they had seen so far and what I should take the time to see. We all had tickets for the Opry that night, so everyone was excited for that. I decided to enjoy the coolness (relatively so) of the morning and set out to walk over to a coffee shop near the Belmont campus that Niels' friend who goes to school at Belmont told him that I should grab a coffee there. It was a neat college town type coffee shop, but completely different from the Frothy Monkey that I had went to the night before. The baristas were not nearly as friendly and the place was buzzing with flies. I continued on my journey through a few more blocks of historic homes and huge trees to the Belmont campus. I wanted to see the Belmont mansion on the campus and just wander around. Now that I am done with college, I have a weird fascination with touring other campuses. It is a gorgeous campus with several old buildings, amazing gardens surrounding fountains, and a neat art gallery.

After a few hours of wandering the neighborhoods, I made my way back to the B&B since it was starting to heat up quite a bit. I couldn’t get the internet at the B&B to work consistently, so I went to get an iced tea at my favorite coffee shop. I spent a few hours out on their patio looking for places online to see in Nashville before I left. I got back at to the B&B in time to shower and get ready to catch a cab downtown to the Grand Ole Opry.

Since the flood in Nashville, the Opry was moved from Opryland to its original location at the Ryman Theatre in downtown Nashville. The Ryman was built in 1891 to be used as a tabernacle until 1943, when it became the home of the Opry. The show was broadcast live nationwide on an AM radio station from the Ryman until the mid 1970s when the Opry was relocated to Opryland. During the years that it was the home of the Opry, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and countless other big names in the industry performed there. The moment I walked into the auditorium, I felt like I was back in Catholic school going to church. The seating is all on wooden pew style benches and the windows at the back of the theatre are stained glass. I guess in a lot of ways the building is best described by its nickname as “The Mother Church of Country Music”. I sat next to a fun, mid-60s aged couple who were touring the South for a few weeks. On the other side of me were two guys from Toronto, Canada. It was such an amazing performance by country artists James Otto, Terri Clark, Bill Anderson and so many more. Each artist sang three or four songs and there were about ten artists total who performed. The acoustics in the theatre were amazing and everyone in the crowd, myself included, were completely thrilled to be there. If I lived in Nashville, I think I would have to find a rehab center from my addiction of going to the Opry for every show. It is without a question the best concert I’ve ever seen and definitely on my agenda for any future visits to Nashville!

Stayed tuned for my next post on the last part of my Nashville trip and a weekend out on the racetrack in San Marcos, TX!!