November 9, 2013

A road trip to Music city : Nashville, Tennessee

soundslikeknock Travel bachelorette, nashville, roadtrip 4 Comments

Nashville has never been a place that I ever thought about going to before. But I’m all for visiting new places so when my friend told me that she wanted to have her bachelorette there, I was pumped to cross another state off of my list of places I’ve been.

We decided to drive down to save some money. The drive from Toronto going non-stop is about 12 hours. We decided to drive leisurely on the way there and stop for food and snacks so it actually took us about 14 hours.

If you’re planning on doing the drive, here is the path we took, and some suggestions for stops along the way.

Toronto > Detroit > Lima > Cincinnati > Louisville > Nashville

Detroit – The Hudson cafe is a cute place for breakfest/brunch that serves pancakes, sandwiches, waffles and other breakfesty things (I’d only stop in downtown detroit during the day… and even then.. be more cautious..

Lima – it’s a tiny city. You pass a bunch of chain restaurants along the highway so if you’re hoping to lunch, this might be a good stop. We choose to eat at the Cracker barrel. They also have an Olive Garden right beside it as well.

Cincinatti – If you’re hungy for a snack, take a quick turn off the highway for some Graeter’s icecream. Yum!

Louisville – Cake flour  (They were on that show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”) They had RIDICULOUSLY delicious treats. We bought a ton of cupcakes, meringues, cookies, and other sweet treats.

If you want to have dinner in Louisville, a few other good restaurants in the vicinity include Mayan Cafe (Latin), Mojito’s Tapas restaurant (Spanish), and Doc Crow’s (Southern).

NASHVILLE!! We’ve arrived!! Here are some of the fun things we did there.

Southern Steak and Oyster

I’m mostly a beer girl but their cocktails here were really good! Blackberry Mountain Tea made with Ole Smoky Blackberry Moonshine, sweet tea, and muddled fresh blackberries comes with high recommendations! Two of the other girls got burgers and said it was some of the best burgers they’ve ever had. They do offer 3 hours of complimentary parking which we didn’t realize until getting into the restaurant so that would have saved us 24 dollars in parking.

Boot country – So it sounds like this place always has a buy 1 get 2 pairs of boots free deal going on. Boots range anywhere from $230-500 so if you can find two friends that also want boots, than it’s a pretty decent deal compared to some of the neighboring boot shops.

Downtown bars – There are a ton of great bars up and down Broadway. Just walk and stop into any bar that sounds like they have good live music happening. We opted for Honkey tonks and Tootsies which were both really fun and really busy at night.

Pedal Tavern – Check out my previous blog post about how ridiculously fun the Pedal Tavern tour is. Don’t go to Nashville without doing this!

The Opry neighbourhood – The Opry Mills mall, the Grand Ole Opry, and the aquarium all share the same parking lot. I’d recommend doing all 3 places in one day if you’re hoping to incorporate them into your trip.

Aquarium restaurant – Lunch at Aquarium which was really neat! The only downside is that they don’t’ have a lunch menu so most of us only got through half of our dinner sized meals. Everything was delicious though. And the view can’t be beat!

The Grand Ole Opry –  for a live radio show. After a few 10 dollar drinks, I was singing along to songs that I had never heard before. So a trick I learned from going to blue jays games, is that the bars are way busier up by the cheaper seats compared to the lower level expensive seats. This was also very true at the Opry. We waited in line for 20 mins before someone came by and told us that there were no lines on the first floor. I can’t promise that this will always be true but it’s a trick that’s worked for me on numerous occasions.

 

Monster Block Party – So this only happens annually around Halloween but if you happen to be there during that weekend, and happen to like electro-house music… it was absolutely incredible! Steve Aoiki dj’d and jumping around and being surrounded by every kind of costume imaginable is quite the experience!

Nashville is definitely a city worth checking out, even if you’re not a country lovin’ gal!