Our trip is hurtling to a close (not sure that is even an expression!) and I’m firmly in denial that I’ll have to go back to ‘normal’ life soon; I want the trip to carry on forever while at the same time I’m quite fed up with staying in hotels and packing up to move on most mornings. Strangely, the hours spent in the car don’t bother me too much as I’ve discovered the USA Today crosswords and I don’t have to drive!
The day started quite slow, like it tends to if we stay somewhere for two nights and there’s not much more to see on the second day! We took it easy and eventually decided to drive to the Grand Ole Opry, which means absolutely nothing to me, but we went there anyway. It was ok to visit and it took care of a couple of hours of our day, and gave us the opportunity to have pizza at a place I read about on the way back, Five Points Pizza. The place is generally raved about on Tripadvisor and everyone calls it the best pizza in Nashville, but for us it was possibly the worst pizza we’ve had on the whole trip, and not worth bothering with. They have some interesting sounding combinations and it is quite a nice and hip spot, but the pizza just tasted of nothing basically. I had some of their famous garlic knots, which was much better than the pizza. Brian had his usual ‘cheese pie’ with bacon and as they do pizza with 2 different halves I had the Vodka Sauce on my half, which sounded much nicer than it was!
We went back to the hotel for a rest as we decided to have a later evening than the night before, and eventually got the shuttle to town at about 6pm. We started the evening in Big Shotz bar where they have cheap drinks, then on to a place across the road where we had some very poor service but nice enough drinks at their roof bar. From there it was on to Broadway and Honky Tonk Central where we had a couple of drinks on the 2nd floor, meaning we could watch the crowds grow in the streets below as it got later. I was googling events earlier during the day and saw that Def Leppard was playing in the stadium just up the road and I was gutted when Brian refused to go and see them with me! We missed the last shuttle back to the hotel at 9pm and carried on bar-hopping until we’d eventually had enough and ended up walking home to try and sober us up a bit!
Nashville is a busy place on a Monday and Tuesday night, and I’m sure it will be a lot worse on a weekend! There always seems to be someone fairly famous playing at one of the bars or stadiums if that’s what you’re after, but the quality of the free music we heard in the bars is generally really good, even if it might not be your favourite type of music! I really liked Nashville and I would absolutely recommend visiting if you like music and drinking, though there may not be that much more to do and see other than that! We only visited the downtown area and from talking to the receptionist and reading some reviews online, there are quite a few other areas with more bars and music if you want to try out some other areas as well.
Biltong and Burger 