On our way home...

Another great trip.  We are waiting for our delayed (of course) flight to LGA.

We had dinner last night at Husk.  It is very good Southern food. The chef, Sean Brock, got his start at the Capital Grill restaurant at The Hermitage Hotel. The Hermitage Hotel is unique because it also has a farm where they farm the vegetables and meats for the restaurants.  They also supply Husk with their beef.  Husk is similar to Andrew Michael in Memphis because they also have a different menu everyday and they have their own butcher.

And now for the awards:

We liked Memphis better than Nashville.  Memphis is easier to get around and has more of a variety of music and food.  Nashville is a real party town.  The bars were packed from early afternoon to late at night.  In Memphis, the bars were hopping just at night.

The room at The Hermitage was much better than our room at The Peabody but there is no comparison in lobbies.  The Peabody has great people watching and a lobby bar.  The bar at The Hermitage is fine but it is down a flight of stairs and much too excluded.

Graceland and the Grand Ole Opry were both bucket list items for us.  The Corvette Museum was a bucket list item for Butch.  Tennessee was a new state for both of us.  We discussed driving over the bridge into Arkansas but we never made it.  Arkansas is going to be hard for us to get to in the future; there's really nothing of interest for us there.

See you on the next trip...

Cars, cars, cars and some random pictures

We met Butch's niece, her husband and their son this morning and all of us drove up to the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY.

The museum was exactly as we expected - many corvettes and details about their design and manufacture.  

The museum was in the news recently when a sinkhole opened up below the museum and swallowed up 8 valuable cars. 

They have an entire section of the museum dedicated to the sinkhole and the restoration of some of the cars.  There is even a sinkhole simulation room. The cars that could not be saved are also on display.

After the corvette museum, we walked around the Gulch area of Nashville.

Here are some pictures of the world famous men's bathroom at The Hermitage hotel. Notice the sign outside the bathroom welcoming women to look inside.

Some things I've never seen before:

Broadway in Nashville has intersections that also allow for diagonal crossing

Grand Ole Opry

Like the good snob from the northeast that I am, I was prepared to hate the Grand Ole Opry.  I was ready to make fun of the place, the people, the outfits, the hair, and so on.  However, I had a great time.  I highly recommend attending a show.  We laughed, we cried, we clapped our hands, we sang along.  The show is broken up into 4 sections with a different host for each section. The host sings a song or 2 and then introduces the other performers.  I admit to Googling some of the hosts to see if they were indeed as old as they looked.  I did not like every performer especially those that sing those ridiculous white trash themed songs.  Maren Morris made her Grand Ole Opry debut last night.  She is very good.  I also liked The Whites, Exile and Mountain Heart.  The big name performer was Carrie Underwood.  The crowd went wild and she was very good but not my favorite performer of the evening.  My favorites were the blue grass performers. 

Butch and I were not prepared for Opryland.  It's huge!  I don't know what we were expecting but giant hotels, a convention center and a mall was not on our list.  I did not realize that it is a 20 minute drive from downtown Nashville. Pro Tip: If you go, take a cab. We would never have figured out where to park or how to navigate Opryland if we had driven.  

Speaking of things we did not expect: Nashville is hilly.  Really hilly. I just assumed it was a flat city but it is steep hills that slope away from the Cumberland River. 

Welcome to Nashville

Our drive from Memphis to Nashville was an uneventful 3 hours along the Music Highway. If we had more time than we could have stopped at the Tina Turner Museum and/or the Loretta Lynn Ranch.

We are staying at The Hermitage, another grand hotel of the South.

No rest for the weary.  We dropped off our bags and walked down to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Artwork seen along the way

We did not care for the Country Music Hall of Fame. It's probably a wonderful experience if you actually have an interest in country music.  

After the Hall of Fame, we toured the Ryman Auditorium.  This tour was one of our favorite things of the trip.  Their introductory movie is the best that I have seen at any museum ever.  

Tonight we are going to the Grand Ole Opry.  

Eating not Walking in Memphis

Both Memphis and Nashville have some great restaurants and I have been looking forward to dinner at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen in Memphis and Husk in Nashville. 

We ate at Andrew Michael on Friday night.  It did not disappoint.  I had pasta stuffed with pistachio and leek in an asparagus pesto sauce. So good! The team that owns Andrew Michael has 2 other restaurants on the same block. Hog & Hominy is known for their pies.  At the end of our meal at Andrew Michael, we asked about having the Hog & Hominy peanut butter pie delivered to our table from across the street. The waiter laughed and said we were not the first people to make that request.  Instead, they called across the street and reserved a table for us.  The pie was totally worth the trek across the street. 

After dinner, we walked along Beale Street and stopped in a few establishments for an adult beverage.  Beale Street is one bar after another and most have live music.  

 

We left for Nashville early on Saturday morning.  We stopped at one more of Memphis's hottest restaurants, Staks Pancake Kitchen, on the way out of town. I had lemon ricotta blueberry pancakes and Butch had cinnamon swirl.  

Some parting shots of ducks from The Peabody

More Memphis Music

As mentioned in the previous post, we hired one of the duck masters to take us on a walking tour of the city.  Besides the hotel, we walked up and down Beale street and walked along the Mississippi River.

The tour was focused on the music history but the music is hard to separate from the civil rights issues of then and today.

After the tour, we went to both the Stax museum and Sun Studios.  It was a fun filled day of music.

We also stopped at Aldo's pizza for lunch.

That's half meatball, ricotta and half jerk chicken, mango chutney.

We are thoroughly enjoying Memphis.  Great music, great food and a little bit of history on every corner.  

The Peabody

We are really enjoying The Peabody hotel.

Butch and I have voted it the best hotel lobby. Besides being beautiful, the lobby has everything you could ask for... good bar, great people watching and ducks. There are ducks! In the lobby fountain! Floating around! All day!

The Peabody is known for the ducks that float in the lobby fountain from 11 - 5 everyday.  There is an elaborate ceremony at 11 am when the ducks ride the elevator down from their rooftop duck house, march across a red carpet in the lobby and jump into the fountain.  The 5 pm ceremony when they return to their duck house is just as elaborate.

The Peabody has ducks everywhere - duck soap, duck lapel pins, duck swizzle sticks, ducks burned into my french toast... you get the idea.  The only place they don't have duck is on the menu.  See this letter from the general manager to the chef at Chez Philippe informing him that there shall be no dead ducks at The Peabody.

We hired one of the duck masters to give us a walking tour on Friday morning. We spent the first hour in the Peabody discussing the very rich history of the hotel. For example, their memorabilia room contains Elvis's original contract with RCA written on Peabody stationary.

Other than ducks and history, the hotel has some other nice features.  For example, the room has little motion detection night lights at the foot of the bed so when you get up in the middle of the night the floor is illuminated for you.