A trip to Nashville provided a welcome solution to a nagging problem that my son and I had struggled with for some time: How could we do a trip together that we could both enjoy when our interests are so divergent? My son is an avid fan of sports, country music and craft beers, while I am a devotee of museums, hiking and history. A four-day visit to Nashville provided the perfect solution.
Initially, like most folks, I knew that Nashville was famous for its country music. However, I came away from our trip marveling at its surprisingly large variety of attractions and activities that encompassed so much more than country music.
As luck would have it, some friends of mine were attending a professional retreat about 40 miles west of Nashville at Montgomery Bell State Park, so I arrived two days before my son, Blake, in order to meet them and see a bit of the Tennessee countryside before hitting the streets of Nashville. Mid-October proved to be a splendid time to visit because the Park was awash in a sea of brilliant fall foliage colors. During my hour drive from Nashville, I passed through small, rural Tennessee towns with their ubiquitous churches, general stores and town halls set among rolling hills. My friends and I wanted to sample local food, so we headed to one of Tennessee’s most highly rated barbecue joints, Carl’s Perfect Pig, “Where a waist is a terrible thing to mind.” For around ten bucks, we had a mouth-watering meal of Bar-B-Que beef, baked beans and fried okra. This side-trip provided a welcome addition to my trip, but I was anxious to meet my son and get started on our Nashville adventure.
As I generally do in new cities, I began by asking several different Nashvillians, “What do you like best and least about Nashville?” The answers were surprisingly similar: “I like the good food, hospitality, modest cost of living, and low crime; the only thing I don’t like is the growing traffic.” We discovered that Nashville is booming as people flock there for its cultural attractions, growing economy, affordable prices, and of course, its rich music scene (rated #1 Best Music Scene by Travel & Leisure.)
We began our sojourn with a football game at Vanderbilt University, whose team was playing my son’s Mizzou team. Sadly, both teams’ performed so poorly that we left at halftime, satisfied that at least we had experienced a football game together there. After a brief rest at our hotel, we headed downtown for dinner and music on the famed Lower Broadway strip. With over 150 live music venues, we easily found places we could both enjoy that offered blues, rock and all flavors of country music. Not many cities in the world can rival Nashville’s variety and high quality of music that streams nightly from one bar after another.
The next day, we decided to check out the historical side of Nashville, starting with the Belle Meade Plantation. With a history dating back to the early 1800’s, the plantation symbolized the success and ethical dilemmas of the old South, but as a place for horse racing fans, it has few equals—“Every horse entered in the Kentucky Derby for the past twelve years can trace its roots back to Belle Meade,” extolled our tour guide.
We proceeded to Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage, situated on 1100 acres, where a small, but nicely laid out museum presented both the story of Andrew Jackson’s fascinating life, and the history of our nation from the late 1700’s to the early 1800’s. Using a self-guided audio tour, Blake and I meandered along the estate’s 1.5 miles of trails that led us to a collection of original slave cabins, the gardens where the president and his beloved wife were buried, and to their stately, antebellum mansion in which, surprisingly, over 95% of the furnishings were original.
On our way back we stopped at Centennial Park to see one of the more incongruous, but impressive sights in town—an exact copy of the Greek Parthenon, with the world’s only replica of its original, forty-two foot tall, shiny gold statue of Athena.
Clearly, Nashville offers a rich variety of historical and cultural sites, but what sets it apart from virtually every other city in the U.S. is its vast musical repertoire. The city hosts the largest community of songwriters in the world, according to the Nashville tourism folks. Its Country Music Hall of Fame, located downtown near the music strip, is referred to as the Smithsonian of country music, housing the largest collection of country artifacts in the world. It came as no surprise that when we stopped for a quick bite at a MacDonald’s near the Grand Ole Oprey, inside was a large display of historic radios and guitars. You cannot escape the presence of music in Nashville.
Our tour of the legendary RCA Studio B, near “Music Row,” allowed us to see firsthand the place where music history was made. As one of the oldest recording studios in Nashville, its musical recording legacy includes countless country stars, but most noteworthy of all, Elvis Presley recorded over 250 hit songs there.
My musical highlight had to be the evening we dined while listening to three local songwriters playing guitar and singing their award-winning songs at the Listening Room Café. The Café’s intimate setting, unlike the noisy (but fun) bars, allowed us to better appreciate their musical talent. One of the songwriter’s San Diego students, retired baseball pitcher Barry Zito, surprised us all with his impromptu performance of a country ballad—just another adventure in Nashville.
As I look back at our trip to Nashville, not only am I thankful that Blake and I were able to find such a fun place that we could both enjoy, but I am struck by the fact that in addition to being a mecca for country music, Nashville offers that and so much more.
Doug Hansen is a travel writer and photographer in Carlsbad, CA. You can find more photos and articles at www.HansenTravel.org
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