Nashville, Tennessee

Earlier this summer, Dustin and I took a fun weekend couples trip to the famed city of Nashville, Tennessee. It was one of those places we’d all been wanting to get to at some point, so we plane-d, train-ed, and automobiled it (minus the train, two couples drove and one couple flew, but it sounded good haha) and convened at a modern little Airbnb in East Nashville for a long weekend.

I of course brought my film camera along to some of our daytime outings, but a lot of the time we relied on our handy dandy cell phones so that we could really be in the moment and enjoy ourselves. We did have a few plans but otherwise basically just winged it, and pretty much ate and drank our way through as much of the city as we could.

A few of our favorite spots were…

• The Grand Ole Opry: We came a bit early and walked around the Gaylord, which was pretty epic, had dinner at a sports bar in the hotel (not thrilled with the service but the food was fine), and then enjoyed a showing of the Grand Ole Opry. It was super fun and although we were ready to head out by the end, we all agreed we were so glad we did it and checked it off our bucket list. Also make a mental note: parking is insane at the Opry.
• The Slider House: We stumbled across this fun little bar and sandwich restaurant after visiting the Parthenon and thoroughly enjoyed our lunch here. It was maybe my favorite spot of the whole trip. Later that night we tried checking out some of the bars along Broadway, but it was way too crowded and overwhelming for us so we hopped in a cab and spent the rest of the night hanging out and listening to live music back at the Slider House. It was way more chill, less crowded, and really fun. And now after writing this, I’m craving a plate of sliders and sweet potato fries ha!
• The Pharmacy: We tried to eat here the first night but the wait is always insane, so we came back on the last night ready to have a few drinks and wait. Turns out our wait for a table was shorter than they expected it to be, but service was still a little slow so we were here for a while. We ate on the back patio and really enjoyed the set up of their seating/lighting out there. We all had burgers and a few of us had floats, and overall it was really good! Definitely a lot of food.
• Tenn Sixteen Food & Drink Co.: This is where we landed the first night after the Pharmacy didn’t pan out and we really liked it. I had chicken and waffles that was amazing. Since it was the first place we went it didn’t go down as super memorable (as we continued to eat and drink at a LOT of different places), but every time I think about that chicken and waffles dish I get a mean craving to go back here. Definitely good!
• Hatch Show Print: I think letterpress is super fascinating and such a neat art form so this was really neat, but when they tell you you get a “free print” to take home, we didn’t know it’d be some super generic small print haha. Maybe we were just being greedy but it was still really interesting to see the print process and learn more about how long Hatch Show Print has been around and how they are such a big part of Nashville’s entertainment and music industry

We really enjoyed checking out the Parthenon, but it was incredibly hot so we didn’t stay too long, and there wasn’t a whole lot to it that deemed staying for long anyways. I’d pass on the hot chicken haha. Dustin and I hate spicy food so we didn’t even try it but the others who did said it was basically like eating gasoline. A month after our trip there was a hilarious article in Southern Living talking about it that perfectly summed up everyones reactions.

We really loved our Airbnb…it had a rooftop deck that was awesome for hanging out in the evenings and having a few beers. Uber was our jam for getting around almost everywhere. We only had one Uber driver we didn’t love but everyone else was awesome, and we used it almost twice a day for all 6 of us. One couple visited the Jack Daniels Distillery tour the day the rest of us were traveling in and they loved it and would definitely recommend making the drive out to tour. And one friend loved the Dreamsicle mason jar cocktail at The Stillery downtown.

While it was a quick trip, we had an awesome time and felt like we experienced a fair amount of the parts of Nashville…especially a lot of the food. We ate SO. MUCH. haha. I think if we were to go back we’d want to explore a bit more of the surrounding areas, maybe some hikes/lakes but overall we made some great memories and were glad for some time away with some of our favorite people!