Monday, November 23, 2015

Nashville: November 23, 2015; Nashville!

Look y'all!  I'm in Nashville.  Broadway.

Landed and apparently, I have an awesome internet connection in the hotel room.  It's really fast!  I might even post more pics than I planned just because it downloaded them so fast...

Weather is crisp, a nice fall day.  Everyone's complaining about the cold, though.  I've just gotten used to it now, but I still wish I had brought my winter jacket.

The plane landed at around 8:25.  Southwest gets a lot of crap, but my flight was run well, in my opinion.  Only problem was the kid behind me who couldn't stop asking his mother what they would do *when* the plane crashed, not *if* but *when.*  I  almost turned around to tell him to shut up.  Even as we landed, he said, to his mother "Are we crashing?  It feels like we are."

Easy trip to my hotel, a walk to the Country Music Hall of Fame and I was there before 10 AM.  Priorities!  It's a nice looking building, in my opinion.  (As always, click on the pics to enlarge).
Country Music Hall of Fame.  The lines on the rotunda are reportedly a musical staff and the lines are the notes for "Will the Circle Be Unbroken."

Inside, the ceiling of the rotunda part of the building.
I headed to my hotel room to get my tripod to get some shots of the skyline.  Hit the golden hour and waited until darkness.  Photos:
Dusk starts to kick in.  Around 4:30 PM (CST).  I noticed the sun sets earlier than in Austin, I think.    Note the AT&T Building aka the Batman building because of its twin antennae.

Detail of the Batman Building.

Night falling.  I think the colours are pretty.  I like pretty colours.

No denying, it's night.
I'm pretty sure I didn't get what's considered the classic view of the Nashville skyline, but it'll have to do.  I'm not going back; too many things to do.  Nashville has a great pedestrian bridge, though, so I felt okay about using my tripod.

Broadway at night.  Honky Tonks!  Not just things in country songs or places where the Rolling Stones meet women and get the blues.  (That's a musical reference for you).

Honky tonks!  Plus live music playing all the time at all these bars and restaurants.  Not just country either.  It's pretty exciting.  The honky tonk I hung around for awhile had a band with a fiddle player who alternately looked overjoyed to be playing, and then had her guitar solo face that I think was invented by B.B. King--the face a guitar player makes like he (she in this case) just smelled something gone bad.  They played mostly new country (which I didn't recognize) but also some Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Tom Petty and Skynyrd, proving my theory that all the lines really blur at some point, (which means the world will be ready for my country hip-hopera in about 20 years).

This is the view from my hotel room.  I think that's the state legislature.
A view of the state legislature (?) from my hotel room.
State legislature, live music (at a reasonable hour), barbecue places, and reportedly a farmers market year round a few blocks from here....  Is this heaven?

The shuttle driver who drove me from the airport gave me a whole bunch of tips.  He said even going to a karaoke bar is amazing because of the talent level in the city.  If I have the time....