Nashville

A couple of weeks back I took a little business trip to Nashville, TN. I've never been to Nashville, and so I took the opportunity to get out and see a little of what the 'City of Music' had to offer..

I stayed in the 'Gaylord Opryland' Hotel -- which was HUGE. Nine acres of gardens, waterfalls, rivers, shops, restaurants, and nearly 3000 rooms all under one roof. In fact, it's the largest Convention Hotel in the country outside of Las Vegas and it was beautiful. Amazing, actually.. especially all of the indoor gardens/water features. Here's just a sampling of the wonders that are there:



In addition to just exploring the insane hotel, we also took the shuttle into town one evening and had dinner at B.B. King's Blues Club. I had catfish and fried green tomatoes for the first time -- both were better than expected. Nashville is a lot smaller and friendlier than I had imagined -- just a couple of 'downtown' streets that we explored.. and live music everywhere. They definitely take their country music seriously down there! :-)

The highlight of our trip was a visit to the Grand Ol' Opry. I was a little shocked when my boss wanted to go, and I mostly went just because I felt bad making him go by himself. However, I'm glad I did. It was definitely an experience. I've never been to the taping of a live radio show.. in fact, I'm not really sure how many of them are even out there anymore. We went to the 'Country Classics' night and between the old country music and the announcer actually reading all the commercials, I felt like I'd been transported back in time. It was more fun than expected and definitely worth the trip -- even if I didn't recognize more than two songs and none of the artists. Here are some of the highlights:



It was a fun little trip.. and the Conference I went to wasn't bad either.. (Actually.. it was quite amazing.. but full of all sorts of work-related stuff no one else would care about..)