After our first week or so getting acclimstised to the Great wilderness in America, it was time to hit up one of the big party towns, Nashville.
Neither of us are big country music folk but Sean and Clare (Laura’s brother and his girlfriend) very much are and would love to visit here one day, so we promised to check it out for them. It was also our first time stopping in a motel…Needless to say, our tent felt like luxury compared to the motel room!
We’d decided to have a bit of a night out in Nashville and got dressed up in our finest (or whatever was cleanest) outfits. We lined our stomachs with some bbq food and had a few drinks in one of the ‘Honky Tonks’, which is one of the many bars that have free live music. You’re encouraged to tip the band a minimum of $20. The singer would come round with a bucket to collect the tips making it feel quite awkward. I guess we aren’t used to the tipping culture but also were feeling a little uneasy that one drink was costing us around £10, so in the end we decided to call it a night after a few. Worried we would spend the entire trips budget on a big night out 😜
Our second day in Nashville allowed us to catch up on admin before we headed last minute to a performance at the Bluebird cafe. Apparently this cafe is one of the hardest to get a reservation at. They host live music in a really intimate setting, where the musicians sit in the middle of the room and jam together whilst we got to listen. There is no photography or phones allowed so it felt great to truly be in the moment for once and lucky that we were able to nab two seats so last minute.
We couldn’t complete our trip to Nashville without a visit to the Jack Daniels distillery which sits about an hour out of town, in a place called Lynchburg. Neither of us are JD drinkers but I (Laura) was curious to see a visitor centre having come from working at Diageo. The your was around $30 so not too bad and our tour guide was a proper Tennessee girl full of knowledge and that American drawl you can only help but smile at.
The town itself is actually in a dry state which means there are no bars around. We got to see the production process and have some ‘educational’ samples at the end, albeit 11 in the morning. As you could have guessed, James palate preferred the sweeter flavoured samples 😆
After a spot of lunch, it was time to head off and make our way down South…New Orleans was calling