Nashville - the highs, no lows

I don't want you to think we just sat around listening to music the whole time we were away.  We were busy sightseers by day.  

We enjoyed roaming around the Andrew Jackson's mansion and plantation on his 245th birthday.  Because of that happy coincidence, we got half price entry, birthday cake, and watched his great, great, great grandson saying a speech.  Mr. Jackson was the 7th president of the USA.  Unfortunately, I know he did some cool stuff for America, but my take-away was that he was a slave owner.  With a lot of slaves.  There's nothing good about that.

We visited the Grand Ole Opry hotel which has 9 acres of garden within its walls.  Can you imagine that?  I couldn't and when I got there, I said to Jbird: Oh, they must mean the hotel is on 9 acres of land, because the garden seemed a lot smaller than I imagined 9 acres to be.  Then I saw a map of where we were which was only a tiny portion of the gardens, there were 3 more large garden areas.  It was really huge and impressive, with waterfalls, running man-made rivers, and a lake.

In downtown Nashville there is a replica of Fort Nashborough.  When the pioneers first arrived, it was December and the river that Nashville is on was frozen over.  The pioneers walked across and set up camp on the other side of the river on the site that became Nashville.  I keep thinking that if they'd arrived at a different time of year, Nashville would be a different city.

We went to the Tennessee State Museum and learned a lot about the pioneers, their lives, more prosperous days a little bit later in history, Andrew Jackson, and some African American slave stories.  Then I hit my wall and couldn't take in any more information.  Oh, except there was a random Egyptian mummy which had nothing to do with anything.

The Frist Art Gallery doesn't have a permanent collection but had three neat exhibitions.  When Jbird and I go on holiday, we often visit lobbies of places and decide we can't afford to go in.  This gallery was well worth our $7 entry. 

I'm a geek and requested an inside view of the public library.  I'm glad we went, it's a gorgeous library with a spacious marble lobby and several exhibitions to look at.

We only made it to the lobby of both Ryman Auditorium and the Country Music Hall of Fame but we're hoping to take Jbird's parents one day - his dad is a big country music fan.  Yes, country music, ew.