a trip to Nashville

Mike had a business retreat in Nashville last week. Since he hates traveling alone, he brought me along. We had never been to Nashville before, and we had so much fun! And we're not even country music fans!

Nashville isn't a terribly large city. In fact, we didn't even rent a car, so we did all of our sightseeing by foot or on city bikes. The downtown is full of restaurants (and bars) and live music. Everyone is a musician in that town, it seems, and most places had a different band performing in each room.

The first night we were there, we rode our bikes to Jeni's to meet up with some old friends and to eat the most delicious ice cream I've ever tasted. Oh man, I craved it for the rest of our trip! But Jeni's was a soggy 9 mile round trip ride from our hotel, so we didn't make it back to that side of town again. Such a shame, because their dark chocolate ice cream is the stuff of my dreams.

Another night, Mike's company provided dinner and entertainment at Sambuca. They had three award winning country music songwriters perform for us, and I am telling you that I very nearly converted to country music right then and there. It was so fantastic! The songs were beautiful and sweet, funny and wild. And the musicians were, too.

Our hotel was close to Centennial Park and Vanderbilt University. While Mike was at his meetings, I pretended to be a coed and ran through the campus and around the lake at the park.

I'm not totally sure why, but they have a life-size replica of the Parthenon at the park. It's not quite as pretty as the real thing, but it will do.

One of my oldest friends, Marcie, lives outside of Nashville. She braved an intense thunderstorm and drove into town to pick me up. We went to Franklin, a super quaint, very old little place about 20 minutes outside of the city. We ate lunch and shopped on Main Street and strolled through the historic neighborhoods. We had a lot of catching up to do. It's been at least 13 years since we've seen each other, I think, and it was so fun! I didn't want our afternoon to end. Thank you, Marcie!

So here's my advice: if you ever get the chance to visit Nashville, take it! Even if you don't like country music and you don't drink alcohol. Tennessee is a really beautiful place, and Nashville is a town unlike any other.

Special thanks to my sisters-in-law Abbie and Lindsi, and my mother-in-law Susan for watching our kids. I didn't have to worry about them one bit while we were gone because I knew they were in such capable hands.