Currently watching the election results, which are
terrifying, so distracting ourselves by catching up on the blog.
In an attempt to keep our costs down, we have been staying
in cheaper motels a little out of the city centre, as we have a car it’s no
problem to zip into the city as and when we need to, and this can save quite a
bit in terms of hotel and parking costs.
We thought we would try the same trick for Nashville, so Joe booked the
Sleep Inn which was supposed to be about a 20 minute drive from the city
centre. We have been using Tripadvisor,
amongst other tools, to review hotels and things to do so that we can get an
idea of what to expect and whether certain activities are worthwhile. There was an indication that this was a less
salubrious area of town, and some average reviews of the motel, but this in no
way prepared us for the reality. To
start with there were three empty beer bottles on the ground next to a car in
the carpark. As I waited for Joe to
check in, a “youth” stepped over the beer bottles to get into his car and drove
off, leaving them sitting in the middle of the car park, waiting for the next
unsuspecting vehicle to run them over. That
gave a hint that it was a classy establishment !
Joe checked us in and we grabbed our bags and made our way
to our allocated room. The smell as we
entered the sliding doors and made our way past reception was our first clue that
we were entering a flea pit. We were
quite early, it was only about midday, so the cleaning was still in progress,
carts all along the corridors and doors jammed open with face clothes - I’m not
using a hotel face cloth ever again. The
smell did not improve as we made our way to our room. Dark, dingy, and it stunk. There was no visual evidence of fleas or
roaches, and the linen looked clean-ish.
Struggling not to be a princess, I gamely went back for the few bits and
pieces we hadn’t managed on our first trip.
People were friendly enough, and greeted us cheerfully though most of
them were missing quite a few teeth. The
thought of staying here for the next three days was a bit depressing. But we pressed on, planned the next activity
and headed back to the car to head out.
We made sure we took anything of value with us, feeling that it was
safer to risk leaving our valuables in the car than in our room.
Time for a quick status check – we were both still
shuddering from the state of the room. When
you are both trying to convince yourself that it’s an ok place to stay, you
need to face the reality that it’s not an ok place to stay. So we decided to get petrol and see what
other accommodation we could find. While
Joe was getting petrol, I found a Holiday Inn in downtown Nashville, and it was
booked before he had finished pouring gas J Now we had to retrieve our stuff and cancel
the next two nights, and give a reason for bolting. So we blocked our noses and made a dash for
the bags, and stopped at reception on the way back out and made up a story for
the startled looking receptionist who had just checked us in, that we needed to
be closer to town and didn’t realise how far out this place was. There can be a few interpretations of “far
out” and in this case, far out it’s disgusting was applicable. The next two nights were duly cancelled and
the cost of tonight’s accommodation was written off to experience as the
world’s most expensive bag storage per hour.
We programmed Dora (who incidentally has not mis-behaved
since her memory was reset) and headed into town. Nashville must be an expensive city to stay,
the Holiday Inn was not very cheap and yet is looking pretty tired on it. But the most important thing was that it was
clean, didn’t smell, and we didn’t fear being over-run with roaches once the
lights were turned out. It is ideally
situated in downtown Nashville, so it was an easy 10 minute walk down Broadway,
where it all seemed to be happening.
Quite a few nice old buildings here, with some pretty impressive
architecture, and we passed a few on our way into town. Broadway is about a six block strip of bars,
restaurants and boot stores on both sides of the road. Similar to New Orleans, tourism has changed
the place, with horse and carriages offering rides around the city. Every bar/restaurant has live music, a mix of
country and rock/pop. The musicians
don’t get paid, they play for tips only, and are allotted performance times
from mid morning right through til the early hours. Seems like a win win for the bar owners, the
music draws in the punters and it costs them nothing. The music was pretty good based on what we’ve
heard, I guess there is a lot of competition and a lot of muso’s trying to get
their break into the big time. Thre is
certainly plenty of opportunity. We had
a late lunch at Tequila Cowboy (nacho’s and quesadilla) washed down with a bud,
and then continued to wander, hitting up several of the boot shops. Lots and lots and lots of boots !! Buy one, get two free …… I tried on one pair but they didn’t have my
size. Ah well …..
We continued to wander the city, down to the river, across
the pedestrian bridge, and back up past the Country Music Hall of Fame building
and eventually to our hotel. We rested
up a bit, got into our glad rags and headed back into town for some
dinner. We stopped at Jimmy Buffet’s
Margaritaville for dinner and then after a quick google search for whiskey
bars, we headed to the Whiskey Bent Saloon to pull up a bar stool and listen to
some tunes. There was a pretty good band
playing, some Johnny Cash and other palatable country music /rock. We found a
very drinkable bourbon (just to remind you we are in Tennessee which is bourbon
country) called Eagle Rare and spent a pleasant evening watching people and
listening to music.
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