Lovin' Nashville

Day 9 –

Saturday, Aug 31 – Nashville

Today was a busy day in Nashville. Rarely do we stay in a city for a whole day. We love Nashville and there is so much to do and see. We started the day with coffee at Fido, a very nice coffeehouse near downtown Nashville. Corinna has visited this coffee shop and bought coffee beans from for Joe, which he enjoyed. If you know Joe, you probably know that he is pretty picky with his coffee. this time he bought his own coffee beans to bring home. 

Fido

sophisticated and cozy

We bought Access Passes to get discount prices for the sights we wanted to see. 

Our first stop was at the Parthenon. It was built for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Expostion. It is a replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. There is a huge statue of the Greek goddess Athena inside.  

Athena...huge!

Joe making a new friend

Just doing a few cartwheels to start the day

 Our first stop was the Redneck Comedy Bus Tour. It was a 2 hour ride to downtown and back. We had a quick stop off on Broadway, a fun tourist shopping area. We bought some taffy at Savannah’s Candy and met a nice young lady that we had a short conversation about loving Jesus! We had a fun time on the bus tour cuz the guide was really funny!

Our very funny guide

He was increasing our vocabulary

From there we visited Fontanel, a large log cabin that Barbara Mandrel and her husband built. It is now owned by two music managers. It was a nice tour.

Chillaxing in the mansion

Then we had a quick tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Did you know that Bakersfield, CA has roots in country music? There was actually a genre of country music called Bakersfield sound. Merle Haggard was one the artist that made this music popular. The museum was very well done.

 We then drove to our hotel just south of Nashville. We found Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, a triple D restaurant (featured on the TV show Diners Drive-ins and Dive). 

We had some delicious barbecue pork and turkey in this cozy place. 

great food and nice people

After that we stopped off at good ol’ Walmart to buy some cards.

Day 10 –

Sunday, Sept 1 – morning in Nashville, drove to Jonesborough to visit Barnettes (Jon and Mary –My sister) and Masseys (niece Natalie, her husband Stephen and son  Matthew(2 yrs old).

We woke to rain and 68 degrees! We dropped off a birthday card to my nephew, Jonny’s apartment. He only lives 3 miles from we stayed! We drove through some side roads with beautiful homes, large green yards, lots of beautiful trees and turkeys!

wild turkey...so cool

We returned to Fido again and had a delicious breakfast and coffee. Joe had spicy scrambled eggs and potatoes and I had delicious sweet potato French toast with caramel sauce and whipped cream! Mmmm!

Then we visited the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home. It was a very informative, enjoyable and beautiful self-guided and docent lead tour of the mansion, grounds and tombs of Andrew and Rachel. We were there over 2 hours.

I love railroad tracks

This is where Andrew and Rachel Jackson are buried 

We arrived in Jonesborough about 5:30. Natalie and family were also there too. We had a delicious dinner and lots of good conversation! Mary made me a birthday cake, gave me a gift (a beautiful table top bird bath), and they sang happy birthday.

My precious great nephew, Matthew

I got help from Matthew