Another fun-filled day in Music City

I suppose the late posts and lack of photos are an indication of how much fun we are having in Nashville. We meant to have an early night and get caught up on the blogging, but then we got last-minute tickets to the Grand Ole Opry and only just arrived back at the hotel.

But I am getting ahead of myself..

What did we do today?

We skipped breakfast in anticipation of a splendid lunch. We started the touring day downtown at the 'Mother Church of Country Music', the Ryman Auditorium. We did a self-guided tour of the building that was first opened in 1892. It was home to the Grand Ole Opry for about 31 years but a number of other great performers graced her doors, including Katherine Hepburn and Olivia Newton John (a couple of D's favourites).

After enjoying the Ryman, we wandered down Broadway one more time before heading out of town a bit to a quiet north Nashville neighborhood that is home to one of the top-rated restaurant in town: Monell's. They encourage you to 'Enter as strangers and leave as friends.' The place is a lesson in southern hospitality that one review mentioned feels like 'crashing a Tennessee family reunion.' You eat at big tables with other people you've never met before, passing bowls of food between you and tucking in. It's an all-you-can-eat deal and no one goes away hungry. Today's menu included lemonade, iced tea, peach preserves, corn bread, biscuits-and-gravy, fried chicken, beef hotpot, spinach-and-ricotta lasagne, corn pudding, green beans, turnip greens, white beans, and some sort of creamy fruity dessert we had absolutely no space for. It was an outstanding experience--one of the many highlights of our trip.

After lunch we headed about 14 miles south to the little town of Franklin. The town was the site of a November 1864 battle during the civil war that proved disastrous to Confederate forces. We visited the Carter House, the location of the Union position during the battle, and enjoyed a bit of a trip back in time to a key moment in the Civil War.

We popped in at the Grand Ole Opry on our way back to the hotel to take a look around. We had tried to book tickets earlier in the week but nothing was available so we'd given up. D asked at the front on the off-chance they had something on offer and the nice gentleman found us a couple of tickets that had just opened up. A quick trip back to the hotel to freshen up and grab a bite at the Waffle House and we were back at the Grand Ole Opry in time for the 7pm show. The show has been running for 90 years and is billed as the longest running radio broadcast in US history. It is apparently the show that 'made country music famous' so it was appropriate that we take a look. D didn't know any of the acts playing tonight but there was an award-winning bluegrass band, an outstanding 12-member-family group called the Willis Clan, and apparently Rascal Flatts are quite famous.