On Thursday morning, March 9th, Anne and I drove to Nashville for a follow-up appointment about my CRT-D ICD. They "unhooked" one of the wires into my heart and thus eliminated the aggravating, disquieting, and exhausting "tic", as I call it -- a pronounced beat when I would be in certain positions. What a wonderful thing now -- feel SO much better.
Anyway, that afternoon we went to see the Parthenon - a full-size replica of the one in Greece -- stunningly beautiful! It's in the midst of Centennial Park. From the glory that was Greece, we then strolled the Honky Tonk Row area downtown. Mostly junk and trashy souvenir shops and 8 or 9 dark, smoky, LOUD country and western bars with hopeful (hopeless?) bands blaring out their songs of regret and remorse and a few restaurants thrown in and LOTS of tourists. Quite a disappointment. We covered it all in an hour. We returned to the motel (and what a really disappointing place that Quality Inn was!), freshened up and readied for a great dinner of steak and/or ribs. We asked the clerk where was the best place for BBQ and she said definitely Jack's, just a couple of blocks over.... Food was good, not a steakhouse or rib place at all; it was more of a carry-out, fish and chips type place -- good food, but a disappointment.
Friday morning, we headed for Opryland. (Let me expound upon the value of the GPS here. Simply invaluable - once you have it, you will not do without it!). The hotel is huge and beautiful with lots of gardens and shops. I had thought it was a place to stroll and admire everything, but it was simply a VERY nice place to vacation with rooms starting around $250 a night, incl. tax. Pretty much a disappointment also. We poked around the General Jackson paddle wheeler , and the NEW Grand Ole Opry building - pretty sterile. Our timing was off to take a tour so we drove to Belle Meade. By this time, it was pouring rain and very windy (or owley, as we say!) We had lunch at Martha's At the Plantation, a tea room as Anne called it -- you know, those fancy little sandwiches (very good) with chips and a drink and a thirty dollar bill ? Anyway, we toured the Belle Meade Plantation -- stunning -- and we were the only ones there at the time for our tour. Very, very enjoyable. A great stop. Belle Meade is the name of the restored antebellum plantation AND the name of the town it is in. RITZY! We toured the neighborhood where Al and Tipper live and several country music stars. A beautiful area of old homes and old money. We had dinner at the Santa Fe Cattle Company -- very good food - peanuts on the floor type of place. During the afternoon we found out that tornadoes had touched down in Murfreesboro and I-24 was closed (our way home!).
Saturday morning we had planned to tour the Rhyman Auditorium -- the original Grand Ole Opry -- but with the rain and more forecasts of bad weather, we decided to head home. On the way we saw a lot of the awesome, unbelievable tornado damage in Murfreesboro.
Nashville is a big city with lots of interstates -- a fair amount of entertainment but usually very crowded and slow. We'll take Chattanooga any day!
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