Two weeks ago was my son Will’s Spring Break from school, so he and I took a 1750+ mile (2800+ km) road trip from our home in upstate New York, USA, down south to Tennessee. Over several blog entries I’ve highlighted where we went and what we did. This is the next to last entry in the series.
Will and I arrived in Nashville around 2 in the afternoon on an overcast and occasionally rainy Wednesday afternoon. The plan was to stay in Nashville until Friday morning and then start the long drive home to upstate western New York. Due to the Eastern to Central time zone difference and a skipped sidetrip, we were in Nashville earlier than expected, but we figured there was more than enough to do in the city.
After checking into the Doubletree on 4th, we headed out the door with the intention of getting to lower Broadway, the heart of the Nashville live music scene. Along the way we walked past Red’s Classic Barber Shop and since Will needed a haircut, we made an appointment for later in the day. It was rather an odd thing to do on vacation, but it was convenient and intriguing.
Beyond Red’s we continued down 4th and passed the Ryman Auditorium, home for many years of the Grand Ole Opry. Aside from my getting yelled at by a guard when I tried to go in and grab some pamphlets after closing hours, we didn’t spend much time there. We had tickets for the Opry at Ryman for Thursday night.
When we finally got to Broadway it was clear that this was where the action was. There were restaurants up and down the street, bars with live music, record shops. Will and I walked up and down the street, stopping in any bar that didn’t have a “21 or over” age restriction during the day. We didn’t drink, obviously, but we stayed for a few minutes at each and listened to the music.
At one bar in particular, there was a particularly good band with a young man playing a tele, a female vocalist, and two older men on bass and rhythm guitar. We didn’t stay long because Will felt uncomfortable hanging out with “old people getting drunk in the middle of the day.” I didn’t blame him and didn’t push it.
We had lunch at Jack’s Bar-be-que and it was excellent. I regret that we didn’t go more than once and we didn’t buy some bar-be-que sauce while we were there. Next time.
We pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the shops. Around 4:30 we went back to Red’s and each got haircuts, and quite good ones if I do say so. The people there were very friendly and talked about their business plan of setting up shops in “small but livable” cities like Nashville and Indianapolis.
It had been a long day by then so we went back to the hotel to relax for a while. Around 6 pm we headed out again, this time to the Wildhorse Saloon for some dinner, some line dance watching, and some live music. We stayed for about 90 minutes and called it a night.
I’ll conclude the road trip story in the next entry and talk about, among other things, how Will got to play a piano also played by some guy named Elvis.
The Entire 2011 Road Trip Series
- From home to Pigeon Forge, TN
- Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- Oak Ridge to Nashville, TN
- Nashville, TN, Day 1
- Nashville, TN, Day 2, and home
