Where was I? Okay, so the Grand Ole Opry was an experience of a lifetime (well I actually hope it's not my last time to see it in this lifetime), but it is certainly something I will never forget!
The next morning after the Opry I was at breakfast at the B&B and got some advice from the others about what I needed to do for the day. After the discussion, I ended up deciding that the Country Music Hall of Fame was on the top of my list, along with touring downtown Nashville on foot for the remainder of the day. There was a sweet couple from Pennsylvania who had stayed there both nights and I had gotten to know them fairly well over breakfasts. Fortunately, they offered to give me a ride downtown with them after breakfast to avoid the heat and having to pay for a taxi. They parked a block away from the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was the perfect location for me to embark on my adventures for the day!
The Country Music Hall of Fame is an architectural masterpiece, not quite to the level of Gaudi I'll admit, but it is an interesting building no doubt. It is shaped like the clef symbol in written music from an arial perspective. From the ground at the entrance though, it resembles the keys of a piano. There are some pictures below of the outside, inside gallery area, some of the neat exhibits at the museum, as well as the view towards downtown Nashville from the front steps. I chose to do the platinum tour of the museum, because it included an audio tour of the 3 story museum as well as shuttle and tour of Studio B on Music Row.
I had an hour to kill between when I arrived and when my tour of Studio B was scheduled to depart, so I decided to make my way up to the top floor of the museum. The museum is loaded with informational plaques about the roots of country in bluegrass, the transformation of its sound to include a more rock n' roll style like Elvis, as well as the steel guitars and twangy sound from its start. They had boots, clothes, hand-written lyrics and even Elvis' "Solid Gold" Cadillac which was painted with a special paint that was comprised of crushed diamonds and gold and had gold leaf mirrors and accents. I barely made it through the top floor in the hour and set off to Studio B.
Studio B is studio where Elvis recorded more than half of his tracks, where Dolly Parton recorded many of her legends like "I Will Always Love You", and many more hits were made. It is just this small building amongst many fancy recording studio that fill up Music Row. The original piano and microphone that Elvis used in many of his hits is still in Studio B. Now the studio is owned by a real estate mogul in Nashville, but run as a non-profit, so no tracks are made there unless they have a historical reference. I believe Carrie Underwood and Reba McIntyre recorded over an old Elvis song there sometime in the past year. After Studio B, I went to complete the rest of my tour through the museum. They had walls of the records for every artist that hit gold or platinum status who had been inducted into the Hall of Fame. It took me over an hour to finish the last two levels of the museum, but I thoroughly enjoyed all the artifacts I got to see and information I was exposed to at the museum.
From there I walked a few blocks to downtown Nashville and down to the river. It was huge and had a neat sculpture on the other side that you can see from most of downtown. I grabbed lunch to get out of the heat of the middle of the afternoon, then walked about 10 blocks to the State Capital Building. Not exactly sure where or why in the history of Tennessee there was an excess of money, but I have to believe that there was. They built a replica of the Parthenon from Greece that has a museum in it. Then the actual Capital Building is absolutely gorgeous, stone/marble everywhere with elaborate light fixtures and beautiful woodwork. It was really neat to see two different Capital Buildings on my trip to compare and contrast them.
After touring the Capital, I walked down to the Frist Center of Visual Arts. The actual building was the old Post Office for Nashville that had been redone for the museum. The first floor had "The Golden Age of Couture" exhibit, which was full of vintage designer gowns, dresses, and accessories from the last decade. Upstairs there was an exhibit of Chihuly, who does masterpieces of blown glass that are at least 20 feet wide, 25 feet long, and 15 feet tall. It was incredible to imagine how anyone could come up with the concept for a sculpture of that size and then even more amazing to think that it is all made of hundreds of individual pieces that are placed in an exact order to make the piece come to life. It was definitely worth stopping by the Frist to see the exhibits!
Nashville was such a beautiful city, I couldn't get enough of it. Eventually I decided that it was time to head back to the B&B from downtown. Once I got to the B&B, I grabbed my laptop and walked back to the Frothy Monkey Coffeehouse to enjoy an early evening iced tea on the patio and book my flight for my next adventure. Niels and his dad invited me to spend the weekend at the racetrack with them in San Marcos, TX outside of Austin. For any of you that don't know me that well, I am unusually obsessed with cars for a 23 year old women. I couldn't pass up an opportunity to go to the racetrack, seeing as I had never even been to a racetrack, so I booked a flight back to Houston that was scheduled to depart from Nashville the following morning.
As travel always goes, our plane was late to arrive by an hour. Once we got all loaded like cattle into the plane, they determined that the air conditioning wasn't working, so they had to get a maintenance crew to fix that. Then to top it off, the maintenance crew realized something was leaking from the hydraulics, which resulted in us getting loaded off the plane like cattle and waiting another two hours for an extra plane to take. All the delays set me to arrive in Houston right at 5pm, which was just wonderful considering that would be the height of rush hour. Poor Niels offered to pick me up, which resulted in him spending a combined three hours in traffic for the whole ordeal. Finally, we arrived back at his house and got things pulled together to head to racetrack the next evening.
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