The continuing adventures...

Saturday my wife and I decided we were going to do a little exploring around downtown. We left our hotel and started walking towards Broadway. We knew that we kind of wanted to do a tour of the Ryman auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. Please note the picture to the right is from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryman_Auditorium), take a visit there if you want to learn more. Sorry, it looks like I messed up my markdown. Anyway, the tour cost a little bit of money, but it was totally worth it. The video that told the back story of the building and how and why it was built was very interesting. They have done a really good job of making it a memorable experience. Here are a couple of pictures I took inside the auditorium.

At one point I just had to stop and sit down in one of the pews and think about all of the famous people who may have sat in that very spot during special events and awards shows. It was a very surreal experience.

Road Trip

After the tour my wife and I decided we wanted to go back to the hotel and get the car so we could go see the Parthenon. The Parthenon in Nashville is a replica of the Parthenon in Greece. It was a nice Spring day though so the park was packed and we couldn't find a place to park that wouldn't require us to walk a huge distance. So we just drove by a couple of times and took some snapshots.

By now we were getting hungry so we decided to grab some lunch at a little place near the Vanderbilt University campus that some relatives had told us about. From the outside it looks like a house, but McDougal's was fantastic. They specialize in chicken fingers and they do them really really well. While my wife and I both got a meal, it was a ton of food and if we were to go again, we would probably share a meal next time depending on our appetites.

After lunch we went back to our hotel and rested for a little bit. For dinner we hit up a local Mexican restaurant that I can't remember the name of. The food was good, but not exceptionally memorable. It was the first time I tried cactus though, that I do recall. We did some more exploring downtown and took the shots you see here.

to the left is picture of Broadway. This is the main street in downtown and pretty much every storefront or every other storefront down here is a honkytonk. Some of them with multiple levels. This is an area I definitely want to explore more next time we visit. The music spilling out of every establishment was great. You can definitely tell why Nashville is called "Music City". Finally my wife and I headed back to our hotel (Happy hour remember).

We ended up spending our Saturday night in the Double Tree hotel bar listening to a nice man and lady singing some songs. At one point the guy told us he wanted to play a song he had written that another artist had recorded and it made it to the top ten on the country charts. At that point I looked at my wife and said "where else but Nashville could you be sitting in a hotel bar on a Saturday night and be listening to a guy sing that wrote a chart topping country song. It was a fantastic experience!

Stay Tuned

I will be writing about our third day very soon. It happened to be Easter Sunday, so we ended up taking a longer road trip. Keep following so you don't miss it! If you enjoy what you are reading, please comment or upvote. If you have any places we can't miss next time we visit, let me know, we love exploring!