Off to Nashville

December 30

Another great day. We drove into downtown and parked the car and started the day at the Country Music Hall of Fame. We decided to do the tour that included the audio tour as well as an hour at Studio B. This museum is a beautiful fairly new building that they are expanding in the next 3 years to be twice the size it is now. We spent about one hour touring the main building, and then took the bus over to Music Row, where Studio B is located. This is the RCA Studio where many many number one hits were recorded, Elvis recorded more than 200 records here. It was a good tour, and nice to see a little more of Nashville on the way there. Back to the main museum and we spent about another 3 hours here, and there was still so much more we could have seen and listened to. Anyone who is interested in the history of country music would love it here. The museum was excellent, took us right from the history through to current times.

By now it is nearly 2PM and our muffins from breakfast are long gone. We head over to Broadway to first pick up our tickets for the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night that we had ordered, wow what a lot of people! There is a college football game here today and the streets are packed with people dressed in maroon colours, hardly anyone from the other team. Mississippi is the maroon color, no idea who the other team was. There is a section along Broadway that is all Honky Tonk bars, these are all packed with people, but it was fun to hear all the live music. No cover charge in the day, hopefully we'll get to visit one more tomorrow. By now we are really hungry, go into one restaurant that did not have a line outside, turns out the line is inside and it will be an hour wait. We asked the hostess where we can go off Broadway that there won't be such a wait, found a great spot a couple of blocks over After lunch we decide to brave the crowds and head back to Broadway, now there is a whole block party set up with a band playing, really fun atmosphere. We have decided not to go to the football game this year, though I am sure it would have been fun.

Next up shopping, yep believe it or not we are off shopping. The city of Lebanon is about 30 minutes from Nashville, and this is where the outlet shopping is. It is an easy drive and we spend a few hours here. It is not huge like we saw in San Antonio, but definitely big enough for us. The only problem we ran into is we could not remember our limits for going home since we are only here for 6 nights and not a full week! We both got new golf shoes at the Nike Outlet, and a few other things around, but we only have so much space in our suitcases, and so much $ to spend. Back to the hotel at around 8:30, walked to another restaurant not far from the hotel and call it a night. Tomorrow is NYE, forecast is 60 degrees again, so should be a great night to spend outside and bring in the new year.