Nashville !
One of the highlights of our trip was our visit to Nashville. We stayed at a hotel downtown on Thursday night and at the Opryland Hotel on Friday night. The four photos below are at the Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. An impressive place with a lot of history, and not just country music history. It started life as a church. The seats are actually pews. Everybody from Enrico Caruso and John Philip Sousa to Sheryl Crow and Bruce Springsteen have performed there.
The Ryman
We spent the rest of the day roaming around downtown Nashville soaking up the aura of country music and visiting a pub or two to sample the local brews and listen to some music. The photo below was outside Tootsie's Orchid Lounge which has probably seen more country stars than the Ryman.
A Tootsie outside Tootsie's
The next day we drove out to Opryland Hotel, which is sort of a cross between Disneyland, Las Vegas and a big shopping mall. It's a huge hotel sprawling over several acres and enclosing lush gardens, shops, bars, restaurants and pools between the buildings. Except for the fact that it spreads out instead of up, if it had gambling, it would fit right in on the Strip in Las Vegas.
Opryland Hotel
Opryland
We went to the Friday Night Opry and saw a lot of country people including Porter Wagoner , Connie Smith, Jim & Jesse, Del Reeves, Little Jimmy Dickens (pictured above on stage), Johnny Russell, The Osborne Brothers and Daryl Singletary, among others. It's very entertaining whether or not you like country music.