Around The World

After getting off to sleep at about 4:00 am this morning in our still-without-power hotel room, we were woken at 4:50 am when power was restored across the city and the lights came on in our room! We drifted back to sleep and the next thing we knew there was a knock on the door from the housekeeping staff at 10:30 am to make up our room! We declined to have our room made up and slowly got ourselves organised to go downstairs for breakfast (well, brunch really).

It was about 11:45 am by the time we got down to the hotel restaurant. The restaurant seemed to be very popular with locals and was very busy. Over a very nice brunch we discussed plans for the day.

We decided that we wanted to see the show at the Grand Ole Opry and since there was a show on tonight, we hopped onto the website to book some tickets. What should have been a simple exercise turned into a two-and-a-half hour marathon as a result of the ticket site basically just blocking any credit card not issued in America. Very frustrating. We eventually got through to the call centre and found someone who could push the payment through.

As a result of the time wasted trying to organise tickets for tonight, we didn’t head out of the hotel until around 2:30 pm. We walked about 10 minutes to the lively Broadway area, which was heaving with people. We were stunned by the number of live music venues, pumping out music onto the street at high volume, and the number of party buses cruising the streets. Many of the music venues were multi-storey buildings, overflowing with live bands and well-refreshed patrons!

We walked all the way down Broadway to look at the impressive John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge, which crosses the Cumberland River. This truss bridge is one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the world. We decided to admire it from a distance, rather than walk across it.

We crossed onto the opposite side of Broadway and walked up to our next destination, the Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman Auditorium was originally known as the Union Gospel Tabernacle. It was built under the direction of Thomas Ryman as a place of worship for the people of Nashville after his conversion to Christianity by the preacher, Samuel Porter. The auditorium is considered to be one of the most revered concert halls in the world.

We enjoyed learning about the interesting history of the Ryman Auditorium and spent about 45 minutes there.

By the time we finished at the auditorium, it was late afternoon so we wandered back through the city toward the hotel, admiring the lovely buildings on the way.

We got back to the hotel around 5:00 pm and decided to have an early dinner before changing to go out again.

We got back upstairs around 6:00 pm and got dressed to head out to the Grand Ole Opry. By 6:15 pm we were back downstairs to catch an Uber for the drive out to see the Grand Ole Opry (which is about 25 minutes by car out of the centre of Nashville).

The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert that has been running in Nashville since 1925. The show started as a one-hour radio barn dance and is the longest-running radio show in American history. The performance is made up of a mix of country music stars and other invited artists, who perform country, bluegrass, Americana, folk, and gospel music (as well as the occasional comedy performances).

The Grand Ole Oprey used to be held in the Ryman Auditorium but relocated in 1974 to a new purpose-built theatre that seats about 4,000 people. The atmosphere was great and the show was a lot of fun.

After the show we caught a taxi back to the hotel. We’re hoping for a better night’s sleep tonight before more exploring in Nashville tomorrow.