It would appear that you have to punctuate most sentences in Nashville with, “Y’all” to achieve the Southern welcome Tennessee is famous for.
“Where you from y’all”
“have a nice day y’all”
“do you want a bag with that y’all”
Which is all very nice, but a bit like the Californian “Have a nice day” it gets a little grating at the hundredth time of hearing lol. Having said that, the Southern Welcome is in abundance where ever you go in Nashville and yesterday we went everywhere our knackered legs would take us. I think we finished the day on 10 miles walked and over 20k steps .. not bad for us 😀

We started the day with a lovely breakfast at the Hotel of fresh quiche, croissants and probably a donut or two to many and the sun was already starting to shine. We headed out with a rough guide of what we wanted to do and first on the list was Antique Archeology, the Nashville shop of Mike & Frank, The American Pickers. It didn’t look to far on the map but was a bit of a trek across freeways, through factory districts and, well, getting completely lost. We eventually found it at the old Marathon Motor Works factory ( which was an impressive site in itself). The shop was a mixture of the junk you would expect if you have seen the TV show and modern tourist tat which we obviously purchased in abundance. Despite being the wrong side of 50 i still get excited about buying a sticker 😀

After a brief visit we decided to head back and find Broadway and the heart of the Nashville Country scene, The Rymans Auditorium. Yet more walking as the sun got hotter was hard going but a couple of drinks stops along the way and seeing the mixture of architecture with the modern sky scrapers intermingled with old buildings and historic State building such as the Capital building kept us going until we eventually reached the famed Broadway.

So then, Broadway, hmmmmm. It’s pretty much Honky Tonk bar after Honky Tonk bar intermingled with the odd tat shop and a few places where you can buy your cowboy hats and boots (y’alll). Imagine Skegness when the yearly line dancing troupe head into town and you wont be far wrong lol. Music poured from the bars onto the streets giving it quite a nice buzz. After walking up and down we headed in for a cocktail and some live country & western in Nudies (I was disappointed, there were no Nudies on show 🙁 ) and then, feeling slightly refreshed we visited the Johnny Cash museum.

The Museum was a nice little bit of respite from the sun and featured loads of artefacts from his home and details about his life. Not sure it was worth the $50 it cost us to get in but I’m glad we did it and despite not being a huge fan i appreciated the artefacts on show and reading his life story etc. Highlight was probably as you leave theres the “Throne” that he sat on for the Hurt video with the video playing in the background. To take a nine inch nails song and make it his own, his epitaph really, was an amazing thing to do and it’s one of those songs that can’t fail to move you.

It was then off to find a place i had on my “must do” list … The Gibson Garage. This is the ultimate Gibson vintage guitar shop, probably in the world and boy it didn’t disappoint. I could have spent thousands had i a more understanding wife 😀 As it was, i left with another sticker for my collection and had to leave the 68 Gold Top and 59 Les Paul standard behind ( i was about $600k to short as well lol)
From there we decided we would take a slow walk back to the hotel via more State Buildings, parks and a farmers market.

Back at the hotel we tucked into the snacks that were out before going out for dinner at German Town Cafe which was just down the road from the hotel. We had a lovely meal with Fried Green Tomatoes, Pasta, Burgers and Key Lime pie to finish. The area is a little reminiscent of the East Village in New York, cool architecture, Trendy places to eat etc. It’s so called due to the area being inhabited by wealthy German Immigrants in the early 19th century and they appear to have brought their Breweries with them to as theres a whole host of locally brewed beers you can sample in the area. The Honky Tonk Cherry Sour beer was most nice!

Anyway, that’s it for today. So ill blog again tomorrow