One Night in Nashville

On the 10th of July, I spent all day packing, putting more music on my iPod and sorting photos. Instead of taking all the old photos I'd been sorting, I decided to make collages in the printer/copier and photocopy them. That worked rather well.

The next day, my dad and I drove to Nashville! I know many of you have been wanting to read about the trip for a long time. Now you finally can, at least a little bit at a time.

We drove to Nashville in eight hours, despite one wrong turn that cost us about 10 minutes. We stopped in Canton at a McDonald's (not included in the time estimate). It was interesting driving through the mountains and experiencing how it leveled off not far into Tennessee. Driving downhill made me somewhat nervous. I've always been queasy whenever I'm in close proximity to large cliffs with signs saying "Falling Rocks". As I've told many of you already, my first words were "I'm afraid of the big rock." Well, driving downhill on a curvy road in a heavy van gives me something else about which to worry.

Driving in Nashville reminded me of Boston, for some reason completely unknown to me. I'm really not sure exactly why. The main differences I observed were that there were actual lanes marked on the road and the traffic lights were in the "right" place.

For dinner, we went to Tayst, which was similar in many respects to ACME Food & Beverage Co. Once we got to our hotel, I called up my mom and asked her to look up restaurants on Citysearch. I can't remember why I didn't do this myself, but I guess the laptop was still in the van. In any case, she picked out the perfect restaurant for us.

For an appetizer, Dad and I shared "Donuts and Ice Cream", which were shrimp beignets served with bacon ice cream and macerated blackberries. You read that correctly. It was really quite good. I tasted what I thought was a little vinegar on the blackberries, but my dad didn't notice. The beignets were slightly spicy and sweet on the outside. The ice cream was sweet with little pieces of bacon on it. It was wild, but very good.
For my entree I had "Duck Duck", which was duck cooked with cherries and duck ravioli, served with spinach and black eyed peas. That was delicious. For dessert, I had Krispy Kreme doughnut bread pudding served with a shot glass sized coffee milkshake. I really liked that. So, if you're ever in Nashville and you have the time, you need to go to Tayst.

I was pleased with the hotel, the Hampton Inn - At The University, next to Vanderbilt. It was nice and clean and we had two double beds.