Nashville

I'm not a huge fan of country music, but I was more than happy to spend a couple of days in Nashville to enjoy its live music scene. Cherie is a fan though.

That morning, while sitting at La Guardia airport in New York, we introduced James to Five Guys burgers. He was in heaven. Personally I think they're the best burgers from a chain restaurant, right up there with Smashburger.

We already had James with us at this point, but we were about to add Shaun to our travelling group.

We flew into Nashville a few hours earlier than Shaun, so we checked into the hotel early and hit up Broadway quickly for some food and drinks.

The first thing that hit us was the humidity. It was overwhelming! It was a five minute walk to Broadway and the three of us were drenched in sweat by the time we got there.

Honky Tonk Central. The name just says it all really. There was a live band going on with all of the doors and windows wide open so you could hear the music from the street. And everyone who walked past certainly had a look in.

Throw in some strong southern accents and I could tell we were in country music city.

After lunch, we headed back to the airport to pick up Shaun, and the car that we would drive through the south for a couple of weeks; an SUV that just barely fitted the luggage for all four of us.

Shaun needed lunch, so we all ate again. And then the drinking started, firstly with some live music at Robert's Western World.

Later that night, after a couple of bars, we ended up at The Wheel Cigar Bar. It was a quiet night, so we had the pleasure of chatting to bartender, Michelle, the entire time we were there enjoying our cigars and whiskey.

Apparently some other Australians had given us a bad name when they were hauled out by the cops one night, so we had to redeem the Australian reputation, which Michelle assured us that we had by the time we had left, after a couple of hours of jokes and banter.

The greatest moment of the night came during the short walk back to the hotel. A man wanted some money from us, so I, to simply get rid of some coins, went to hand him about 75 cents, and Cherie went to give him a dollar. But James decided that for our trouble, he should get a cigarette off the man, so he snatched it right out of his hand, while he was still smoking it. The look on the guy's face was utter disbelief. He just stood there with his $1.75, not quite sure what the hell just happened. The rest of us were in hysterics!

We had breakfast at Loveless Cafe the next day. It may seem like a long way out of Nashville, but it's worth the drive for some of the best southern cooking I've had. Between the four of us we had biscuits with preserves, bacon, eggs, turkey sausage, fried chicken and country gravy and it was one of the best breakfasts I've had in the US, only matched by Hollywood Cafe in San Francisco.

And that night we went to the Grand Ole Opry.

If I had been a big country music fan, this would've been my wet dream come true. There were thousands of people, most up on their feet screaming for their favorite country music artists.

By the time the intermission came around, Shaun, James and I were actually enjoying it, having first been very skeptical about whether we could handle a couple of hours of country music. Cherie is a fan, however she wasn't able to come along with us.

The next day, before taking off down the interstate towards Memphis, we stopped into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Again, not being the biggest fan of the music, I wasn't quite sure who many of the artists featured were, but I could certainly admire the guitars they all played! Sweet looking semi-hollows and resonators everywhere!