Nashville, Tennessee

First stop: Nashville, the home of country music! When walking up and down the main drag, every other building has a bar and floating out of every bar are the sounds of a country music band. Our hotel lobby used to be a railway station and they have kept the grand ceilings and ornate decorations but have given it a warmer, cosier feeling.

The lobby of the hotel

We ate dinner at Merchant's, a diner-style restaurant. In true southern style, all of our appetizers were fried. Let the gluttony begin! They included fried green tomatoes, duck fat fried tater tots, fried okra, fried oysters, fried catfish and fried pickles. That is a lot of batter!

For the mains we tried to avoid more fried food but that is easier said than done. We had blackened catfish, french dip, and fried shrimp tacos. Almost no fried food!

     

 Since we felt our calorie consumption in one meal was not large enough we had to add dessert. A large, creamy root beer float and piping hot peach cobbler with butter pecan ice cream topped our calorie count.

 The next morning we did some sight seeing to try to burn off some of the million calories we consumed the night before. We visited Grand Ole Opry where we perused some cowboy hats and saw our first 'no guns' sign.

For lunch we had our first BBQ meal! I had a sweet and tender smoked pork loin sandwich. We also ordered pulled pork, pulled chicken and fried catfish. Add liters of refreshing sweet tea to wash it all down and you have a typical Nashville meal.

 After that monstrous lunch we all succumbed to food comas on the drive to Memphis. Hopefully we can be resuscitated on arrival!