Nashville Sun-Mon

Sunday 10/27

On our first morning in Nashville the six of us were going to have brunch with Joe & Margaret's son and daughter-in-law, Michael & Tia. But first, when Michael & Tia arrived at the house they handed Joe & Margaret a card and gift bag to open. Inside was a little white onesie with a message How does Grandma & Grandpa sound? Joe & Margaret were positively thrilled with the news and we were glad and honored to have witnessed the disclosure. It is a long awaited and anticipated event!

After Ooh's and Aah's, laughter and hugs, and huge, huge smiles, we headed off to the downtown Nashville restaurant Biscuit Love with its claim of "100% homemade" and "Born in the South".

I've been an East Coast girl and a West Coast girl but never a Southern girl. To me, biscuit is synonymous with a spiral wrapped cardboard tube that says Pillsbury and shows an image of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Horrors, I know! (For more about the lovable and famous Pillsbury Dough Boy, see our 2018 trip to Minneapolis and the Mill City Museum). 

Nearly everything on the menu here was made from biscuits, even something they called Bonuts which are made from fried biscuit dough. I opted for a relatively tame French Toast entreé called Lily where biscuits are used instead of bread. It was a little heavy for my taste and I could not finish it all, but when in the South, eat – or at least try to eat – as a Southerner. Both Bonuts and the Lily are specially notated on the menu with small hearts as favorites. Other hearted dishes were 1) Pork and Pimento made from freshly fried pork rinds, 2) East Nasty which tops biscuits with fried chicken thighs, aged cheddar, and sausage gravy, and 3) Princess which tops biscuits with spicy boneless HOT chicken, pickles, mustard, honey.

The parents-to-be and grandparents-to-be were all smiles to be sharing an adventurous meal and such good news. We all were happy to be there with them and to start off out Nashville trip on such a high and unique note.

We had gotten a late start in the morning and we did not leave Biscuit Love until around 2:45 pm when Michael and Tia headed off to their home. We needed to find a low-key, half-day activity and so opted for a movie. Two of us couples, having been fans of the TV series Downton Abbey, wanted to see the recently released movie. Joe & Margaret, also fans, had seen the movie already but enjoyed it enough that they were willing to watch it again. We located a showing at a Regal Cinema associated with a mall 15 minutes south, The Mall of Green Hills.  We planned to get dinner at a nearby restaurant, North Italia.

We parked in one of two parking garages for the mall and walked along a lengthy corridor to enter the mall around Nordstrom's at a point at the southern end of the mall. We were confused as to where the North Italia restaurant was and, while we were studying a store directory and map, a friendly security cop asked if he could help us. We told him where we wanted to go and he said the route was quite circuitous and confusing (we agreed) and that he would escort us there. In my mind flashed visions of the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop but without the Segway and with the name Rickie instead of Paul. Rickie told us he just needed to do a few security check stops along the way. We followed faithfully on his heels as he whipped up one corridor and down the next, covering what seemed like every inch of both floors of the mall. The mall's Sunday hours are 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM and it was about 5:30 PM so I surmise we became part of his closing sweep. We eventually exited out a door at the north end of the mall where Rickie took us nearly up to the front door of North Italia, whose only entrance was external to the mall. Rickie even pointed out what our route would be to the cinema, just yards away.

The restaurant had a nice warm ambience, a point of pride in their self-description, along with the quality of their food. I enjoyed the wine display along the wall and the delicate, homey, copper and flower candlelit touches at the table.

At every one of our North Italia locations, our team is full of passionate and dedicated people who work hard every day to deliver the perfect handcrafted experience. We use only the best ingredients to create and serve consistently crave-worthy food, like our chef’s choice daily pizza and fresh pasta made from scratch daily. To us, nothing is quite as satisfying as sharing a dish of handmade pasta and savoring every bite, sip, and moment with the people who matter most. From the warmth that draws you in, to the vibrant energy letting you know you’re in for something special, the North experience invites you to indulge in not just what you taste, but what you feel.

We had our hostess take a picture so this time I am in it! Our food had not arrived yet but when it did we thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we waddled off to catch the movie at the neighboring movie theatre.

The plot behind the movie Downton Abbey is that the king and queen of England are going to visit Downton Abbey and the staff is in a flurry to get ready. Maggie Smith plays Violet Crawley the Dowager Countess of Grantham (although I will forever think of her as Professor Minerva McGonagall from the Harry Potter movies).

Dowager means "a woman holding property or a title from her deceased husband." It comes through French from the Latin word meaning "to endow" and is related to dowry.

 Penelope Wilton plays Lady Isobel Merton. I love the witty banter between the two of them.

And what better for a royal visit than a Regal Restroom? Alright... bad joke.

The movie was a bit trite, but enjoyable in a predictable happily-ever-after sort of way that is satisfying. It had been two hours long plus previews, so it was after 9:00 PM when we headed for home base. We needed to find our way back to our car. It was not in the parking garage associated with the theatre and the other parking garage was not connected. We remembered we had entered at street level in the other garage and that turned out to be at a level between the second and third floors. Only the makeup of a crew such as ours could intensely debate whether one should overshoot, going up to the third floor in the other garage and working our way downhill to the car, or exit the elevator or stairwell at the second floor and work our way up. Yes, seriously. This was a non-insignificant laughable discussion in which people took sides. Where was Rickie the mall cop when you needed him? We did wind up at the car eventually and it did start!

After reaching home base, we were in time to catch only the tail end of Game 5 of the World Series. It was just as well. The Astros trounced the Nationals 7 to 1, so exposure to the misery was minimal. The Nationals would need to win the final two games, and as visitors, not on their home turf.

Monday 10/28

Monday we planned a tour of Belle Meade Plantation. This plantation is not agricultural in nature but primarily a horse-breeding plantation. It was located about 6 miles or 20 minutes southwest of our home base. John & Sue and Joe & Margaret headed out via the rented car; Frank & I got a later start and took an Uber ride to catch up.

John & Sue and Joe & Margaret took the 10:00 AM mansion tour and began roaming the grounds. Frank and I arrived in time for the noon tour but it was booked so we bought tickets for the 2:00 PM tour instead. We looked around the visitor center (black arrows at upper center) and met up with John & Sue and Joe & Margaret for lunch there before beginning our own plantation tour in earnest.

We had brunch/lunch at Harding House

Elegantly nestled in the heart of Belle Meade Plantation, The Harding House offers a location for a delicious lunch to celebrate any special occasion or, to enjoy the ambiance of one of Nashville’s oldest homes.

The mural of the mansion on a wall in the stairwell in the Visitor Center just outside the Harding House restaurant was very captivating. Frank & I would see the interior of the mansion later. We would skip the winery tour at the tail end of the mansion tour, although John & Sue and Joe & Margaret had said it had been an enjoyable cap off for them.

Our entire group set off to see the carriage house and stables situated between the Visitor Center and the Mansion. Within we saw several multi-passenger sport and outing conveyances. The Roof-Seat Brake, also char-á-banc, which means carriage with wooden benches in French, was pulled by two teams of horses. We did ponder how the ladies would manage to get up into those high seats negotiating around the spoked wheels with their long full skirts.

The Vis-a-vis Sleigh was the most elegant of a non-sporting design and driven by servant or coachman. Its French name means face to face. The lighting in the carriage house was quite muted and so the displays lacked luster in my opinion. What did interest me and John was how they got each of those carriages into the confined space of a former horse stall through a rather narrow doorway. The conveyances must have been lifted up and over the walls with a crane or physical heave-ho of some sort.

What I did find very interesting was that Belle Meade has a singular reputation for producing horses, sired through the stud Bonnie Scotland, who are famous winners of the Preakness (P), Kentucky Derby (K), Belmont (B), and the Triple Crown as per the following radial chart.

The plantation gained the reputation of being the premier horse farm in the south, raising, selling and shipping stock throughout the country. In fact, Belle Meade was so influential in thoroughbred breeding that famous horses like Seabiscuit, Secretariat and Barbarro, and every horse to race in the Kentucky Derby since 2003 can trace their bloodlines directly back to Belle Meade!

Frank and I made our way to the front porch of the mansion awaiting our 2:00 PM tour. No pictures were allowed inside the home so this is all you get.

After our 45 minute tour, we found the rest of our group there to meet us as we emerged. Isn't this a handsome group of seniors in their rocking chairs?

Frank and I did a cursory view of the central part of the map (e.g, the Gardener's house, the Doll House and the Smokehouse) not venturing to the far southern boundary of the property where our friends had gone earlier.  There is a small notation in the upper left corner of the Belle Meade map that reads:

TREAT YOURSELF:
Did you know that our walking path is approximately 1 mile long? Walking it will burn most of the calories found in one scoop of our ice cream.

We did not navigate the walking path but we did indulge in the ice cream at the Coop 'n' Scoop ice creamery. We tasted their free fudge samples, too. Yum.

We relaxed that night with pizza. There was no World Series game. I broke out the jigsaw puzzle and began to sort for edge pieces but we did not begin to seriously attack assembling it until later in the week.

Nashville Arrival and Overview

Frank and I annually spend a week in a rented house with two couples we know from MIT, exploring some city of mutual agreement. This year that city was Nashville. Our touring in Nashville was fairly compact. For a sense of scale, the trip from the airport to Taco Mamacita, a restaurant one block from our rental house, was just under 10 miles. Most cities develop near a river and we usually take a boat tour early on in our stay to get oriented. We did not in Nashville. The Cumberland River meanders in the environs of Nashville but unless we were willing to take a bachelor or bachelorette party boat, there were no other appealing river options for "Music City". But we had plenty to see nevertheless. Following the map is a partial list of what we did do:

Friday 10/25 & Saturday 10/26 
•     staggered arrivals at BNA
•     dinner at Taco Mamacita
Sunday 10/27
•     a big reveal
•     brunch at Biscuit Love
•     dinner and movie at The Mall at Green Hills
Monday 10/28
•     tour of grounds and mansion of Belle Meade Plantation
Tuesday 10/29
•     walking tour of downtown Nashville
•     visit to main branch of Nashville Public Library

Wednesday 10/30

•     visit to Tennessee State Museum & Bicentennial Park

•     lunch at Farmers' Market

Thursday 10/31

•     tour of Ryman Auditorium

•     evening show at Ryman Auditorium

Friday 11/1

•     walk around Parthenon and Centennial Park pond

•     dinner at Bavarian Bierhaus near Grand Ole Oprey

Saturday 11/2

•     departures - flights within 15 minutes of each other
      now that's planning (or luck)

Friday 10/25

Our weeklong trips generally run Saturday to Saturday, but this year Frank and I tried leaving a day early and staying the preceding Friday night in a hotel with the hopeful intent of getting a bit more time zone acclimated. We are on Pacific time and the other two couples are on Eastern time so they are generally up and raring to go three hours before us on that first day. Miracle of miracles, we had a direct flight into BNA. BNA is short for Berry Field Nashville (Airport), and the military facilities at the airport are still commonly known by this name.

Leaving Oakland about 30 minutes late due to the repair of a non-functioning air conditioning system, with a slightly over four hour flight and a three hour time shift, we did not get to Nashville until around 10:00 pm local time. Even though it is dubbed "Music City", Nashville is also known for its food. This is the very first sign with the name Nashville" on it that I saw after deplaning.

We noticed and admired a colorful mobile hanging from the terminal ceiling. I imagine it is even more colorful in daylight hours with the sunshine streaming in. I am unsure if the individual components were molded glass or some sort of plastic/lucite but they were pretty. Having done a small amount of stained glass work many years ago – before kids and fear of stray glass splinters caused me to drop the hobby – I would guess from the sharp, concave corners that glass would crack along those lines if it were cut. Glass would be a lot heavier, also.

After we exited the secure area, I glanced back and observed that the boundary was clearly delineated with the bold letters DO NOT ENTER emblazoned on a red carpet. I found the choice of red carpet to be ironic. Isn't rolling out the red carpet supposed to symbolize "Welcome?"

We picked up our luggage and trudged the long haul to the shuttle pickup location for our hotel. The ground transportation area seemed far, far, away; but perhaps we were just tired. Interesting enough, I learned that Nashville airport was the first in the U.S. to allow Uber and Lyft services. The year was 2014 and at that time the services were banned at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Memphis and Raleigh-Durham.

Our hotel, Comfort Suites Airport, was about four miles away and of course arriving at the late hour that we did, there were not many dinner options available to us at the airport or locally. We wound up ordering two Philly Cheesesteaks from one of those DoorDash type delivery services to wolf down in our room shortly before midnight. They were delicious, but a Philly Cheese in Nashville...? Then we flopped into bed to grab some sleep before our hotel-provided breakfast and the 11:00 am checkout time. I think next time we need to rethink our "arrive a day early to rest up" philosophy.

Saturday 10/26

John & Sue, our friends from the Boston area, had also arrived a few days before Saturday but they used the time to go hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park about three hours to the east. They met up with Frank and me at the Nashville airport shortly before noon when our hotel shuttle dropped us off and we went to lunch at an airport satellite of Tootsies Orchid Lounge, one of the few eateries outside of airport security. Little did we know then, since it was before our walking tour of Nashville, that Tootsies Orchid Lounge, the original location in downtown Nashville, is famous as a honky tonk that launched the careers of many famous country stars and was a favorite gathering place for artists after their performances at Ryman's auditorium. The color is audacious and the result of a painter's mistake that the owner decided to retain as a signature hue over the years. She changed the name to match the decor.

The food was good but not stellar and did little to reinforce my expectations of Nashville as a great city for mouthwatering cuisine. The musical notations on the menu however, did further hint we were in "Music City".

The third couple, Joe & Margaret,  would arrive around 2:00 PM on their two hour flight from Washington DC. After the four of us had eaten, we walked over to meet Joe & Margaret when they emerged from the secure area. Along the way past the ticket counters between two security ports of entry, were two of these "trees". I thought they were a unique form of Christmas tree but, since it was still October, wondered if they were a year-round part of the ambience. I admired them and their variegated foliage, photographing both John & Sue and Frank & me beside one of them.

On closer inspection I saw that the "trees" were individual plants arranged on an elaborate conical rack composed of levels of metal rings to hold each pot.

Doing a Google image search to learn what the plant might be, Wikipedia yielded the possibility of

Codiaeum variegatum (garden croton or variegated croton) is a species of plant in the genus Codiaeum, which is a member of the family Euphorbiaceae. TOXICITY: As with many of the Euphorbiaceae, the sap can cause skin eczema in some people. The bark, roots, latex, and leaves are poisonous. The toxin is the chemical compound 5-deoxyingenol. The plant contains an oil which is violently purgative and is suspected of being a carcinogen. Consumption of the seeds can be fatal to children.

Hmm. Somehow, me thinks this is not the correct identification for a plant in the public area of an airport...! Perhaps they were artificial or the similar species garden croton. A Home Depot add yielded this photo for a "17 in. Garden Croton Artificial Plant in Basket (Real Touch)". Artificial would solve the hassle of watering the plants to keep them alive. But I thought I noticed dead and shriveled leaves in the bottom tray. Ah, the mystery continues. I will not know the answer and the several paragraphs and photos I devoted to this conundrum is certainly enough. It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that Frank is not going to be a fan of buying such a rack and installing it in our living room for Christmas. Populating it with Home Depot artificial foliage at $17 a plant is not going to be a selling feature either. Maybe I will print out a glossy photo and post it on the wall.

Having dawdled a sufficient amount of time at the "tree stands", we parked our luggage and ourselves outside the security portal and awaited Joe & Margaret's exit. After hugs and chatter we made our way with them down to the car rental area.

Near the ticket kiosks was a wall mural, another indication we were in the "Music City". In the car rental area, a banner for the Grand Ole Opry was a second clue. As my Apple Maps navigator Siri would say "You have arrived".

After painstakingly arranging our six pieces of luggage and sundry carryons into the hatchback of our silver seven person vehicle, like carefully placed modules of a Tetris puzzle game, we climbed in and began to set up the navigation system. We realized would need to wait to do that until we got better reception outside the parking garage. We fastened our seat belts. "Everybody ready?" asks Joe. "Yep." "OK." "Ready.""Good to go". "Uh-huh." chirps a cadre of voices.

Joe presses the starter button of the keyless ignition.  – Nothin'. – Tries again. – Nothin'. Right sequence? √ Right ignition token? √ Dead battery? 'Fraid so. We moved our own luggage without any Avis employee assistance or apology to an adjacent red vehicle. I grumbled a bit that perhaps Avis's advertising claim that "We Try Harder" does not truly reflect their actions. After some confusion as to where the paperwork to the silver vehicle actually went and the issuance of new paperwork for the red vehicle, we eventually got on our way. The drive from the airport to our rental home took less than 30 minutes was under 10 miles.

The home did indeed have a front entrance off the street of its address, but since parking was in a back alley a few steps from a wooden porch at the rear of the home, this is the main view we saw each evening when we returned from our daily adventures.

Entry from the rear porch led into a family room with two couches, two chairs. and a TV over a fireplace. Adjacent was a dining room with a long table, conducive to eating, puzzling, and gaming. Beyond that was a sleek white full kitchen with counter seating.

We dropped off our luggage and selected our respective bedrooms, Joe & Margaret on the first floor, John & Sue and Frank & me upstairs. In between the two upstairs bedrooms was this nice little sitting area. I made use of it to sit up and knit when my west coast time clock got the better of me at night and I could not fall asleep when everyone else did.

Then we walked to dinner at Taco Mamacita one block away.

In addition to soups, salads, tortillas and enchiladas, the variety and scope of tacos on the menu was incredible. Here were creative taco choices.

The decor was as inventive as the menu. I was bemused at the variety of "stuff" hung from doors and grates suspended from the exposed ceiling.

We enjoyed our food and our company. A neon sign at the rear of the restaurant was as brightly lit as the smiles on our faces.

We walked back, satiated, plunked ourselves down in the comfy family room, and caught the end of Game 4 of the World Series. We are all Nationals fans and so catching just the end of the game was fortuitous considering the trouncing the Nationals took from the Astros. But we took heart. The series was tied 2-2. There were three more games to go and a week of fun lay ahead of us.