Retired and Lovin' It: NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

We began our first tour of Nashville by Greyline Tours. We always find this handy to see and hear what we might like to go back to and spend more time on. In this case we went back and spent a second day walking the downtown district and taking more pictures. There is never enough time for pictures when taking on a guided tour. We drove through Centennial Park

and looked from a distance at the columns with bells

with each one representing a county of Tennessee, I believe. I always think that I will take some notes, but never do. Then my memory fails me!! I would love to hear these bells when they are ringing, but we did not wait around for it. The wall has world events and dates on it and is quite a long wall. I do not remember what it begins with, but I do remember a 1600 AD date in one area. Here again it would be interesting to walk and read it all. Maybe next time. Behind the memory wall, this round ball with the world map

is so perfectly proportioned that it floats in water and turns continuously as it floats. The ball weighs 18,000 pounds! The bus driver did tell us how they put it in place, but I do not remember that story!

As we head for downtown and view the sky scape

, we have to decide what to see next! It is overcast, but we are believing that the rain is now past Nashville, hopefully. And believe it or not, the sun did come out and it was a beautiful day and comfortable.

When we took the bus tour we got to stop and go through the Ryman Auditorium. And I will do a separate Blog about it and some of the stories that our guide told us, if my memory will pull them up. The driver pointed out the local radio station where Oprah Winfrey began her career, before going off to NYC and then Chicago. He also pointed out the different recording studios and told us which stars recorded in each one. We saw the Sarah Cannon ( aka, Minnie Pearl ) Cancer Center, which is the hospital that "Minnie" had built after she had breast cancer. Nashville's Baptist Hospital is also known as the third largest hospital in the eastern United States, larger only by the Mayo and the one in Rochester.

So on our second trip around town by ourselves, we decided to check out the Country Music Hall of Fame

. Some of the walls in it are covered with thousands of gold records

, but the most interesting part was the individual displays of each artist. We got to listen to their life stories and to their music as well as looking at the displays of their clothes.

Then the circular Hall of Fame where their plaque hung after they were inducted. I took a picture of Elvis'

and Brenda Lee's

because I wanted to remember a story that our guide told us after we had watched a short film in the Ryman. She had asked us to see if we could recognize the little girl in the film that they showed us, who the little girl was standing on Elvis' foot. Of course, we did not, but it was Brenda Lee. She was actually inducted into the Hall of Fame the year before Elvis (1997) and is claimed to have helped put Nashville on the worldwide music map with her millions of record sales. Her first national exposure was before her 12th birthday when she appeared with Red Foley and the "Ozark Jubilee". Can you guess the song on her first record?? It was "Dynamite".

As we drove around and walked the streets we saw the Tennessee State Capitol building

,and on Broadway Street

we saw one of the oldest buildings still standing which was originally a drugstore

. We also walked Music Mile, Commerce

, Union, Church, and Charlotte Streets from 1st Ave. to

7th Ave. including Printer's Alley

which is well known for it's crowds at night when all of the bands are playing in the bars

, and the alley is crowded. We did not go at night so can not attest to it personally. But we did find many bands in the establishments along Broadway. We sure got our exercise that day and that is why we spent at least an hour in The Stage on Broadway

listening to Stacy Scruggs

and the band that she was with. After leaving there, we stopped in the doorway of several more, one of which was Tootsie's

that I will tell you about when I do the Blog about the Ryman. The bands are all quite good and we could have spent a day just bar hopping

listening to music!!

It was an interesting view to see the tall buildings right in among the old smaller buildings. This is the AT&T building

that they say looks like Batman and the US Bank which they say looks like R2D2

!! We also saw the Schermerhorn Symphony Center

, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop

with walls lined with photos

of all of the country music stars. Then there was the Somet Center

that is the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, and what used to be the Silver Dollar Saloon

which has silver dollars embedded in the floor

and is now just a gift shop. There was also the Hatch Show Print Shop which to this day still makes all of their posters hand rolling the ink. We got to watch them at work and the walls were lined with posters of by gone days.