Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Rainy Day in Nashville Ends in Song

When fairly heavy rains put the brakes on plans to visit Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, we decided to catch an uber ride to The Nashville Farmer's Market instead, which is mostly covered or enclosed. 

The majority of fresh produce vendors are not at the farmer's market on weekdays it seemed, but the Market House Restaurants and Shops building was packed with lunch crowds. After perusing all of the many and varied food court vendors, we chose Village Bakery & Provisions for a shared grilled brie and peach sandwich on freshly baked bread with a lemon eclair. Yum! There was a bit of confusion when we were waiting for our sandwich. The baker walked up to the front counter and mumbled something and handed me a hot from the oven, large loaf of bread. I smiled brightly, said something like, "Thanks. Wow, still so warm." I had no idea why the baker handed me the bread or what he said. Then he came back a moment later and told me it was pugliese bread. I repeated, "pugliese? Thanks." Then I tried to pay the cashier for the bread, still confused, but trying to act like I knew what was happening. The cashier smiled and said, "He GAVE that to you." I replied, "Oh! So sweet! Thank you!" I have no idea what the baker initially said or why he gifted me bread, but it was delicious! Also I am awkward sometimes.

Too often Chad and I do more during a vacation week than other people do during a work week. We're not people who relax easily, both fueled by varying combinations of anxiety, caffeine, ambition, fear or missing out and wanderlust. It is actually odd for either of us to spend multiple hours unstructured or unplanned on vacation, but that's what we did before heading back out to meet our dinner date for the evening. There was a good bit of staring at our respective phones, reading fiction and general laziness. Someday I will have a vacation where I spend the majority of time relaxing and being lazy. Dare to dream!

Our dinner date and local host for the evening was Ed, another of Chad's high school friends. We met up with Ed in the long line outside of Hattie B's Hot Chicken. As a buzzkill vegetarian who tries really hard not to judge while other people eat meat, I did not partake in the hot chicken. Apparently the chicken is fried and spicy. I did enjoy some macaroni and pimento cheese, people watching and eavesdropping. 



After dinner, we crossed the street to the Broadway Brewhouse for a very adult milkshake called a bushwacker which featured approximately eight different liquors. Delicious and dangerous! Perhaps the drink also served as liquid courage for our next stop: The Big Bang Dueling Pianos Bar in the heart of Broadway's Music Row. I've often been accused of seeming aloof or too cool for school, but this was not the case in the middle of a silly-fun sing-along at the dueling pianos show. The musicians totally engaged with the audience and seemed like they were having a great time, which made the audience have a great time. They performed modern songs such as "Shut Up and Dance" by Walk the Moon and "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift. One of the musicians started a funny game where he pointed out that a $2 tip prompted a Taylor Swift song, but that for $3 he would play a different song without missing a beat, which he did while the other musician suggested that a $4 tip would start the Taylor Swift song back up where they left off, which we also got to witness. This was likely a bit they had done before, but it seemed impromptu and super-fun. They also performed an awesome medley of Beatles songs courtesy of a $100 tip/request from an audience member. We stayed for about two hours, and I sported a huge grin the entire time. Let it be noted that I also joined hands and swayed to the chorus when instructed to do so during the Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline". In summary, I was neither aloof nor cool. 

Ed had to be at work in the morning, so we didn't stay out late. Chad and I had to check out of our loft and be at the rental car pickup for our drive to Louisville the next morning too. We loved seeing friends in Nashville, having locals show us around and make suggestions. Nashville is truly charming, but we wouldn't have felt so welcome without our friends there.

Check back soon for harrowing tales of driving I65 to lovely Louisville.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Pretty History & Good Eats in Nashville

Since 1875 Hatch Show Print presses have produced posters advertising entertainment such as country music shows, jazz shows and even wrestling matches. Several years ago, Chad and I went to an Austin exhibit of Hatch Show Print posters. We were excited to see the actual Hatch Show Print studio, gallery and class space during our trip to Nashville. Though Hatch Show Print has moved locations several times during its rich history, the old print blocks and presses made the move to the current location. The walls are new, but everything else has a respectable patina. On the tour, we learned more about the history of the shop, the contemporary workings of the shop and got to pull our own print through the press in the classroom. We exited through the gift shop naturally, picking out lots of letterpress cards.

On the way back to the loft we walked past the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, stopping to admire some fountains and sculptures outside the impressive venue.






After a lunch of Puckett's leftovers at the loft, we walked to The Frist Center for Visual Arts. The building itself is a sight to behold. What once housed the central Post Office for Nashville is a marvel of art deco finishes and details of marble and forged metal. The exhibits were also worth seeing: Italian Style: Fashion since 1945; Postcards of the Wiener Werkstatte; and my favorite, Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape installations and sculptures.




We stopped at an empty table in the children's activity area at the Frist to design our own Italian-inspired fashions. Mine is the orange and pink. Chad's is the brown and turquoise. Really? Brown? No.



Walking to and from The Frist Center, we saw many lovely historic buildings. I totally get why Nashville is called the "Athens of the South" with all of the classical style architecture. My top three favorite buildings were:

Hume-Fogg High School

U.S. Customs House Nashville

Union Station Hotel

One of our main reasons for going to Nashville was to catch up with friends who live there. Our scheduled date for the evening with one of Chad's best friends from high school, Hunter, was sadly, but understandably, canceled. Hunter and his lovely wife are first time parents to a very new baby, and consequently in desperate need of sleep. Our dashed date with Hunter yielded some great dinner recommendations in the form of a very helpful and apologetic email with a list of places he would have liked to take us. From the list, we chose Five Points Pizza in East Nashville. The vibe was fun: the right balance of laidback and lively. The salads and New York style pizza slices were awesome. If you've been to Home Slice Pizza in Austin, you might rightly draw comparisons to Five Points Pizza in Nashville.

We walked around East Nashville a bit after dinner to see what there was to see, and stumbled upon Pied Piper Creamery in a cute old Victorian house. The place was empty except for the nice lady working there. We shared a small scoop of trailer trash (vanilla ice cream with Oreo, Twix, Butterfinger, Nestle Crunch, Snickers, M&Ms, and Reese’s Pieces). The trailer trash ice cream was sublime and worth every calorie. We sat on the front porch of Pied Piper Creamery looking down the hill to the sidewalk for some light people-watching. Maybe it was the light rain falling, maybe typical Wednesday night doldrums or maybe good stuff just isn't as mobbed in Nashville as it is in Austin, but there weren't many people to watch. If Pied Piper Creamery existed in Austin, there would be a constant line out the door and down the sidewalk like there is at lick ice cream in Austin. The only place I experienced crazy crowds of people in Nashville was at Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant. These days in Austin it seems as if anything worth doing, or going to, has a forty minute wait or a line forty people deep.

It was a welcome change of pace to get out of Austin for a bit to cooler temperatures and lesser crowds of people. Come back soon for more travelogue tales of cooler weather and much more manageable "crowds".

Much Nashville Sightseeing


Our first full day in Nashville was full of sightseeing and visiting thanks to my good friend & awesome former boss-lady, Kat, and her knowledgeable Nashville-native husband, Brian. They were the hosts with the most!

I'm an admitted over-planner when it comes to travel. I sent Kat a lengthy list of places in Nashville I hoped to visit, and asked her to pick one or more that we could do together. Kat picked two places from my list, and we ended up hitting four places by the end of the day.

Kat & Brian picked up Chad and I in their super-comfy, king-cab truck. Our first stop was Bongo Java near Vanderbilt and Belmont Universities. Bongo Java serves breakfast all day -- yes, please! Our brunch was hearty and cheap. The order at the counter service was perfect for chatting without interruptions from a server. It was so nice to catch up a bit with Kat, and find out more about Kat's and Brian's adventures since moving to Tennessee.

After brunch Brian acted as tour-guide showing us beautiful, stately buildings around Vanderbilt and Belmont on the way to one of the best tourist traps I've ever seen, the Parthenon. In Nashville. It was pretty cool to see a full scale replica of Greece's famed Parthenon. I was floored by the giant Athena statue inside with its sheer size, gold leaf detailing and iconography on her headdress and shield. Look in the bottom left corner of the photo below. That's a full-size adult you see by the column, to give you a sense of scale. Giant. Athena.




After the Parthenon, Brian drove along Music Row pointing out famous clubs, record companies and music venues. We also checked out the waterfront terraces and pedestrian bridge. Brian gave us good insight into how Nashville changed over the past twenty years, including the population growth.

While downtown, we cruised through the historic and impressive Hermitage Hotel Lobby ever so briefly. No less than three uniformed hotel employees said "welcome" to us during our two minutes of looking at the lobby and its ornate, restored/maintained grandeur. While the employees smiled and said the word welcome, we understood that we needed to move along and not stop for any photo opps. The hotel lobby was full of men dressed in full suits on a hot day, discussing very important things, I'm just sure. *Click here for images from the Hermitage Hotel lobby.* *Click here for some history of Hermitage Hotel.*

Next up we went to Marathon Village, formerly the Marathon automobile factory, now home to many shops, a soda fountain, a coffee shop, a fancy artisan distillery and offices. It's cool to see old buildings repurposed with a nod to their historic pasts. There is a display in one of the lobbies of Marathon Village with photos and details about the old car factory.

After so much sweaty sight-seeing, we stopped at The Slider House for liquid refreshment. We tried to chat more, but the (over-caffeinated? anxious? well-meaning but clueless?) waiter checked on us every two minutes, making it difficult to finish a thought.

After Kat and Brian dropped us back at Printer's Alley, Chad and I rested a bit from our very full day before walking to Puckett's Grocery & Restaurant for dinner. This place is all about barbecue. We both left smelling of barbecue. Chad got a plate with three different kinds of meat on it. "Good for you, not for me", says the vegetarian. Our sweet server, Valerie, kindly helped me navigate the menu to find vegetarian options: a few of the side dishes could be assembled as a veggie plate or a veggie burger with fries. I got the veggie burger and added a fried green tomato to it. Yum! Also huge! Chad and I both took half of our meals back to the loft in to-go boxes. I'm thankful that our loft had a full-size refrigerator. I do not enjoy trying to cram leftovers into a mini-fridge amongst mini-bar items when traveling.

We slowed our roll a bit for the rest of our Nashville trip. Check back for more travelogue soon.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Nashville Charms

At the risk of angering legions of country music fans, I must confess that neither Chad nor I are country music fans. Sure, Chad dabbles in some mopey alt-country bands such as Dawes, Wilco and The Jayhawks, but overall, not so much with the country music. We went to Nashville... and did not go to Opryland, did not seek out live country music and did not tour Ryman Auditorium. Also, I'm a vegetarian, and did not partake in the fine food offerings of barbecue or hot chicken for which Nashville is famous. We did lots of other fun stuff instead!

We arrived in Nashville on a Monday in the late afternoon, and cabbed it straight to our accommodations in the Printer's Alley Lofts from the airport. Our cab driver told us how much Nashville is growing and how fast it is changing. We saw construction cranes on the horizon, road improvement projects happening and deep pits dug out for the foundations of huge new buildings. We also saw many historic buildings in Nashville with beautifully maintained and/or restored facades all over the greater downtown area. Comparatively, Austin has Congress Avenue, Judges' Hill and parts of Sixth Street with a smattering of historic buildings. I quipped that Austin is the kind of city that would be born if Nashville and Los Angeles had a baby: some live music, a few historic buildings, too much traffic, some famous people and lots of shiny, new stuff.

Our destination, Printer's Alley, is likened to a miniature version of Bourbon Street, in the middle of the downtown Nashville hustle. It was named for the printing industry that once occupied the land. Printer's Alley was also part of the "men's quarter" where a few generations of men went to behave in most ungentlemanly ways. Liquor during prohibition? Sure. Burlesque shows? Plenty. No-tell motels? Yep. Yay for history! Currently Printer's Alley features karaoke bars, blues bars and restaurants with controversial plans for a new hotel.

The charming entrance to Printer's Alley Lofts 

Our studio rental in the Printer's Alley Lofts had historic touches like hardwood floors and exposed brick walls with modern conveniences such as great air-conditioning, a heavenly spa jet bathtub, and double-paned windows that kept out the street noise. Since we had a kitchen in our loft, bigger than our kitchen at home I might add, we walked to HG Hill Urban Market for provisions such as peanut butter, dark chocolate, milk, coffee, frozen waffles and crinkle-cut carrots. This mini-market has a great selection of deli foods, dry goods, dairy and produce for such a compact space!

One does not typically think, "I'm in Nashville. I think I'll go to an English-style pub," but I was getting hangry after a traveling most of the day and missing lunch. (Hunger-induced anger/crankiness = hangry). Fleet Street Pub was just downstairs from our loft, and serves veggie burgers with British-style chips (thick wedge-cut french fries). Chad had fish and chips, but was dainty and picked the breading off of the fish, and did not eat most of his chips. (I know! I don't get it either.) On a hot, sunny day in Nashville, the subterranean cool & dark of the pub was most welcome. My only complaint: it was surprising to see/smell people smoking in a restaurant or bar. (Austin is a clean-air city with no smoking allowed in restaurants and in most bars. We're spoiled that way.) Chalk it up to being in tobacco country, I guess. 

We were in the heart of downtown Nashville, just steps from Broadway: the street in Nashville synonymous with nightlife and live music venues. After dinner we went for a looky-loo walk to gawp at all the neon signs along Broadway. Just wow. *Click here for images.* With all the great live country music happening around us, we committed country music sacrilege by stopping only for Savannah's Candy Kitchen. Mmmm... candy.

But wait, there's more. Check back for more Nashville travelogue soon. 

Friday, August 14, 2015

Sit. Stay. Good.

In April Chad and I went to Key West, Florida. Hope you read those posts on this blog, because there will be a quiz later.

In July I went to North Carolina to visit seven of my ten nieces & nephews, my sister, her husband and my mom. I loved hanging out with them. I get to see them only once a year or so, because they live quite far away. There's no direct flight from Austin to Raleigh-Durham on commercial airlines. The drive would clock in around twenty hours, so that's just like impossible. Also, you try traveling with seven kids. Also, my sister may be a bit afraid of flying. I go to them. It's nice to get out of my usual grind. Chad stayed home to take care of the pets/pests and some important business junk.

In early August, Chad and I spent a week between Nashville, TN and Louisville, KY. (Don't worry, travelogue on the way.)

We were home for about thirty-four hours, before Chad drove me to San Antonio to perform in a dinner mystery show. I should call this particular show a lunch mystery show, because it was at lunchtime, not dinnertime. I played the detective, per usual. The audience and venue couldn't have been lovelier. (More on that later.) It was exhausting.

Now we're home. It's hot as Hades here. Seriously the high temperature the other day was one-hundred-six degrees Fahrenheit. I continue to be struck by how crowded Austin is recently, and by how much traffic, congestion and construction there is. Our neighborhood is up in arms over property development happening across the busy street. Yet, it is so good to be home with my pets, my stuff and my familiar routines.

I'm ready to stay put for a long while. I don't want to see the inside of an airplane or the aggressive speeding of motorists on an interstate for many months.