Once again, Sylvia was having her usual May birthday and so it was time to schedule another trip to celebrate! Cynthia and James had recently traveled to Nashville and had a wonderful time. Never having been there, and being the country-music fan that she is, it seemed that "Music City" USA was the perfect place for her birthday celebration!



Our first stop was a layover in Houston. We had a couple of hours to spare so we stopped for breakfast at an airport restaurant. Here is Sylvia with her first vacation breakfast! I had the meaty omelet!

Then we moved on to the Hilton Downtown hotel which proved to be very central to all of the sights we planned to see. We had to take a little detour to Walmart to pick up a camera of all things because Sylvia forgot her phone! Yes, forgot her phone! So she needed a camera to commemorate the trip in photos. The pictures shown below are of the beautiful lobby of the hotel.

Since we arrived shortly after noon, we decided to explore the area around lower Broadway. Below, right across from the hotel, was the Country Music Hall of Fame. The middle picture shows our hotel with Sylvia in the foreground. The picture on the right is the Nashville Symphony Architechual Fountain outside our hotel.

Less than a block away was lower Broadway with Friends in Low Places Bar and Honky Tonk (Garth Brooks' bar) right around the corner! It was the first place we headed to. We had watched the special on Prime and were eager to visit the place and it did not disappoint us! It was about 2 p.m. in the afternoon so I thought things would be a little bit slow there. I was dead wrong! The place was packed and was jumping with music!


Sylvia and I took pictures with the Garth Brooks statue at the entrance! And then we headed immediately to the second floor. You could see the band from the second floor. We had a drink there, before heading up a huge staircase to the third floor, THE OASIS!

Once up in the Oasis, there was another band playing. We sat at the bar and ordered two pina coladas and two orders of Trisha's spicy chicken. Total cost=$73.00! Yikes! But everything was delicious and the music was fantastic!

After a couple of strong drinks, spicy chicken and about an hour and a half of great country music, we staggered out of the Oasis and headed back to our hotel!

Friends in Low Places was as fantastic as we expected it to be. We were not disappointed!

We rested up for a few minutes but headed out again for a Nashville's Lost Spirits: Murder and True Crime Haunted Pub Crawl that I had signed us up for. It was at a place called Printer's Alley about 1/2 mile away from our hotel. We decided to walk -- a somewhat bad choice since we were already somewhat inebriated.

But the tour was a lot of fun and our tour guide was great! He took this picture to the right (above) before we started! We visited some of the highlights in Printer's Alley including SKULL'S RAINBOW ROOM, a bar left over from the prohibition and speakeasy days of the past, and DREAM, a bar with a shark/seaside decor!

In general, despite the lively bar activities inside, Printer's Alley had a very seedy aspect to it! The kind of place that might be a little unsafe after dark! But just like lower Broadway, it always seemed to be teeming with lots of people! Below is Sylvia being "eaten" by a shark. Inside the bar, there is a shark cage. She caught me with a drink in my hand (surprise, right?).

Needless to say, by the end of the tour, we were worn out, had way too much to drink and were ready to go back to the hotel to crash for the night! It had been a long first day!

The second day started a little later than we expected! We had planned to get up late morning and start exploring again, but we zonked out until after 12 noon. We finally showered and exited the hotel sometime after 2:00 and headed to the Opry Mills Mall. We shopped a little bit. Sylvia bought some stylish sunglasses at BUCKLES. She was looking for a rhinestone fringe denim jacket but we never could find one. We hadn't eaten anything and stopped at Johnny Rockets for some burgers and cheese fries!

We had tickets for the Grand Ol'Opry which was within walking distance of the mall next door, but wanted to visit Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum first! Johnny Cash and Rihanna were there guarding the entrance!

Above, Sylvia is seen with BB King, Connie Britton of the TV show, Nashville, and Elvis. There is also a wax figure of Darius Rucker.

Below is Sylvia with Hank Williams, and we both took pictures with Loretta Lynn. Kid Rock is also pictured.

Here I am with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and getting a little frisky with Minnie Pearl!


Below is a picture of me singing a duet with Patsy Cline. Sylvia getting her thang on with Diana Ross and James Brown, "the hardest working man in show business", is leading the Soul Train!

We actually had a lot of fun with a lot more wax figures than are shown here, but these were some of our favorites. Sylvia just had to take a pictue with her favorite "George", I got a little fresh with my hand on Tammy's leg, and well, Taylor Swift took a little time off with Travis Kelce to take a picture with Sylvia.

There were so many pictures on this trip, 94 to be exact, that I had to break the page up into two pages. Click the link below to look at page 2 for the rest of the Nashville trip pictures!

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