My Trip to Nashville!

For my birthday, my boyfriend took me to Nashville, Tennessee! Neither of us had been before, and he knows I love country music, so it was the perfect place to celebrate my special day. 

Here are some highlights from my trip:

Seeing a concert at the Grand Ole Opry

This was the one thing that I knew I wanted to do while we were in Music City. I kept monitoring the guests who were going to perform during the long weekend, and I eventually purchased tickets to see Logan Mize. I had never heard of him before, but after checking out some of his stuff on YouTube, I liked his sound. But I had no idea how many acts we would see that night. We saw EIGHT different acts! Each performance was just a couple of songs, so we had a nice variety. Along with Mize, we also saw Parmalee and Chris Janson (he was the headliner), and included in the mix were also comedian Brian Bates (featured on Dry Bar Comedy) the R&B duo Louis York, and a few old-timey sounding country singers. I didn't expect quite a show like that! It was so much fun, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Nashville. And if I ever get back there, I'm totally going again!

Here are a few of my favorite songs from the night:

Logan Mize' Better off Gone

Parmalee's Take My Name

Chris Janson's Flag on the Wall (I had never heard this song before, but I like patriotic country songs!)

And here's a video of Janson playing the harmonica at a previous concert at the Grand Ole Opry:

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Visiting Nashville Distilleries

I'm not a beer drinker, so I don't really go to breweries, and wineries are normally outside of city limits, and we didn't have a car for this trip. But more and more cities have distilleries that are easily walkable from downtown, and Nashville has plenty of them! On the afternoon when we arrived, after we had lunch at Jack Cawthon's for some barbeque, we headed to Clinton Street where there are three distilleries in a row! The first one we visited (and our favorite) was Nelson's Green Brier Distillery. We loved hearing the history of this distillery: it was the first one to make Tennessee whiskey, and just a few years ago two brothers discovered that this distillery was started by their great-grandfather, so they picked up the tradition! We also did tastings at the Tennessee Legend Distillery (which really just felt like a gift shop), Grinder's Switch Winery (not a distillery, but), and Corsair Distillery (where I bought a rocks glass; my first souvenir!). On another day we visited the tasting room for the Ole Smoky Tennessee Distillery. They have so many flavors, but each day they pre-select the seven you get to try. When you paid for a tasting, you got a coupon for $10 off at the gift shop, so I bought a second souvenir glass!

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Going to the Seltzerland Festival

Along with the tasting theme, we went to the Seltzerland Festival at the Riverside Golf Center. We had not planned for this at all. I just googled things to do in Nashville for that Saturday, and this popped up. I had heard of these hard seltzer tastings before and always wanted to go, and now I had my chance! We paid for the Uber to take us up there, nearly 30 minutes away from Nashville. We started with White Claw and worked our way through some familiar brands like Mike's Hard Lemonade, but most of them were totally new brands to us. My thoughts on each (that I can remember):

• The pineapple flavor of the Mike's Hard Lemonade Seltzer was the best. Very refreshing for the summertime!
• Buzz Ballz has cute packaging in little spheres, and the chocolate one was so yummy!
• Happy Dad's claim to fame is that it's less carbonated, which I personally don't like. I enjoy the bubbles!
• Mighty Swell had so many flavors to choose from, I couldn't even taste them all! I was a bit overwhelmed, so all the tastes kind of meld together in my brain...
• I had seen Wild Basin in Total Wine stores, but I had never tried it. At this event, they were just showcasing their hard teas, which I didn't like as much. I would have liked to try the berry flavors instead.
• Freshie is a brand-new tequila seltzer that only has one flavor: lime. It's kind of like a margarita, but if I had my choice, I'd rather have the traditional cocktail.
• Country Luau is pretty new, made by a guy who was into cocktails. A percentage of sales go to musicians, which is fun. The flavors gave me tropical, summer-time vibes.
• I had seen Lone River's Ranch Water previously (it was even offered at the Kendra Scott grand opening downtown the day before). I'm not the biggest fan because it's not as fruity or flavorful as most seltzers. But we did try their new margarita seltzer with a splash of their spicy flavor, and that was pretty good!
• Flying Panda was started by a woman (woot!) and each flavor supports a different endangered animal species. Amazing work! I'd buy it just because of those two things!
• Post Meridiem's canned cocktails are really what did us in. While hard seltzers usually have about the same amount of alcohol as beer or wine, these miniature cans were ~25% alcohol, making them strong. This did not mix well with the light, less alcoholic seltzers! So while they were fun to try, I'm not sure they are the best fit for this event...

About half-way through the loop of tastings, we reached the food trucks, where we enjoyed some truffle pasta (why there was no pizza truck, I have no idea). But that's as far as we got: the alcohol, the sun, and the heat were getting to us, so we just headed back. If I go to one of these again, I'll definitely hydrate more and pace myself better!

Having a milkshake at Legendairy

My friend recommended the Legendairy Milkshake Bar to me, and as the owner of an enormous sweet-tooth, I had to check it out. My boyfriend and I split (no pun intended) the banana split one, replacing the strawberry and banana ice creams with just chocolate. SO delicious! Not that I had any doubts. I could have eaten any of these and been in heaven. My only complaint was the cost: it was nearly $18 for us to split one, and that doesn't even include the branded mason jar! Very yummy, but perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing.

Watching the dancing at Nashville Palace

The same friend who recommended Legendairy also suggested that we check out Nashville Palace after the Grand Ole Opry. It was about a 20-minute walk, but not bad on a pretty night. It feels like a dive bar for sure, and the drinks were sub-par. But watching the regulars (I assume) two-step and line-dance was so much fun! They were amazing! As a blues dancer myself, I can definitely appreciate some good social dancing, and they were tearing up the floor. I have no idea how they knew which sequence to dance to which song, but they were killing it. It made me want to dance! But the only song I took part in was the Cha-Cha Slide, since it tells you what to do... Like this:

And we did even more things than that! We visited the Johnny Cash Museum, had drinks at Nudie's, shopped for boots and hats along Broadway (although didn't buy anything), walked around Vanderbilt's campus and saw the Parthenon in Centennial Park... We packed a lot in!

I would definitely visit Nashville again. But after a couple of years of not being able to travel, I want to go to some new places first. Next up: Austin, TX for my sister's bachelorette party! Stay tuned for that post!