There’s a high likelihood that you may have heard me mention a recent trip to Nashville which I was very excited about. Well, gather round y’all, and I’ll tell you all about it!

The welcome competition at Nashville airport immediately reminds you that you aren’t in New York anymore: What a prize! There’s definitely an element of truth to the Kenny Chesney song “She thinks my tractor’s sexy” though…

We stayed in an Air Bnb in Edgehill which is a cool neighbourhood with its own bar and cafe scene so we channeled Toby Keith’s Whiskey Girl and kept it local on the first night with a few rounds of whiskey-based cocktails at a bar called Tavern while admiring the edgy locals.

A southern brunch was our first stop on Saturday morning, so we put on our Daisy Dukes (sadly no cowboy boots) and headed to Edgehill Cafe for biscuits with eggs and bacon – Yum!

We had a bit of time to kill for our cultural bike tour of Nashville so we wandered round Vanderbilt which is beautiful but appears to have no students… we’d be happy to enrol though! (hope you appreciate my panorama below – it look a lot of attempts!)

And then it was time for a bike adventure featuring Nashville’s “Batman Building”, the beautiful Union Station, squeaky brakes and lots of treacherous cycling across highways…. 

Don’t worry though, if you did happen to hit an innocent cyclist whizzing across a highway with the truck you won in the airport competition, you deserve to be paid – here’s who to call:

So far, so civilised. Then it was time to head downtown to Broadway, Nashville’s heart where the country music is. We started with a quick line dancing lesson at the Wild Horse Saloon to make sure we weren’t too out of practice and soon had the moves down so we were ready for bigger and better things. That led us to Honky Tonk Central, three floors of live music with people spilling out onto the balconies. We grabbed some Corona’s and basked in the sun while country tunes drifted out… this is the place when knowing all the country songs makes you cool, rather than the other way around!

Feeling left out with our lack of cowboy boots, we went across to Boot Barn (“Buy 1 pair, get 2 free”- yep, seriously) to have a browse. Sadly the others couldn’t be persuaded and I didn’t find the perfect pair so I’m empty handed this time but I promise you that one day, I will be honky-tonking on Broadway in those boots:

Now, all that dancing and shopping had made us hungry and you know I like my chicken fried so that took us next door to Merchants where I got me some friiiiieeedd chicken – happy Amy right there!

No night on Broadway is complete without a visit to Tootsies so that was our next stop where we weaved our way between the floors, listening to the amazing talent on show. They even played my favourite song, Rain is a good thing!

Things were starting to get a little messy on Broadway around 10.30pm (where around 60% of the people there are on hen parties) so we headed off the beaten track on a local recommendation to Printer’s Alley and a bar called Bourbon St where once again we were amazed by the live music on show! And they gave us free beads! We were definitely amongst more locals here and had a great time.

We were slightly late to brunch on Sunday morning and walked round to a place called Fido which served up this delicious creation with a large serving of much-needed iced coffee.

Look what we stumbled upon: School of Taylor Swift!! If only we could enrol…

And then for the big excitement of the weekend (after Taylor Swift, of course), a trip to The Bluebird, Nashville’s most famous listening room, incidentally owned by a lady called Amy. (I greatly enjoyed this fact as all the signed pictures on the wall are addressed to Amy.) We had to queue for about an hour but it was 100% worth it! The venue has very strict capacity so it was borderline whether we would make it inside – this photo captures our excitement at making it in!

The band was called Sons’n’Britches (see what they did there) and they were fantastic! So fantastic in fact, that when they signed my CD and started asking me about The Beatles (clearly my accent is as strong as ever), I told them they were better than The Beatles… This might have been a slightly sweeping statement but I bet they’ll be telling people at their next gig! I would definitely check out the not-quite-as-good-as-the-Beatles band though – my favourite songs were The Real Dirty South (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcd4YKwR-Ao&spfreload=10) and Live Bait, Cold Beer and Gasoline. Turns out their videos are pretty hilarious too. (And yes, my CD does say “To Amy, Go Beatles.”)

Nashville, you were awesome and made all my country dreams come true!