Boston Partners do Nashville

We decided to take an adults only trip to Nashville with our good friends Brent and Catherine. We waffled for a while on potential Nashville dates - we were going to go last spring, then thought about maybe going during the summer for CMA fest, then football season started and we had to choose an away game weekend to make the trip. We finally settled on the weekend of Nov. 2-5. We drove down there on Thursday and came back on Sunday. It was such a fun long weekend!

We stayed with some of Brent's family friends that have a great house in an awesome location. How sweet that they would let us crash there! When we got to Nashville, we had a little happy hour and caught up with our hostess, but then we had to get ready to grab dinner at Green Hills Grille and do our first Nashville night out....at The Bluebird Cafe! I'm a fan of the show Nashville, which features The Bluebird a lot! I never thought we'd get a chance to go but Lavonna and Clyde, our hosts, were able to get us reservations there. The seats sell out really, really quickly!!!

Our first selfie of the trip

So famous!

Gretchen Peters

Enjoying the show

Post-show, feeling sleepy

We got to attend the 9:00 show, An Evening with Gretchen Peters. Gretchen is a songwriter and has written for Martina McBride. She was a little, um, on the sad side. Most of her songs were slow and depressing...there was a lot of death and alcoholism and abuse...but we were glad to be there, nonetheless. Ha! One thing that surprised all of us about The Bluebird was how incredibly tiny it was. We'd heard that it was small and intimate, and were expecting that, but it was so much smaller than I had envisioned. There were probably only 10 small tables and 4 church pews. Honestly, it was such a late show, since it was 9 PM central time at the start, so the longer the show went on, the sleepier I became. We were sitting in the back in the church pews and it was dark in there and I'm not a night person, so there you have it. Still, such a cool experience! We got to talking to some other people there after the show was over and had a mutual friend (sorority sister) in common with this guy and he actually called her! No telling what time it was! Poor thing! But it was pretty funny and Catherine and I got to talk to her. We all got some Bluebird gear before we left and all agreed that it was a bucket list kind of thing and we were so glad and thankful that we were able to check it out.

On Friday we had reservations to do a party bike - Sprocket Rocket. This was a something that I'd never done before but had seen and heard about them. It lived up to its reputation - a blast! You pedal around the city on this large bike that can hold probably 12 people and listen to music and drink beer. The bike employees are tons of fun and make it so entertaining. Let me please say that Nashville was VERY warm on this day. Like, way warmer than I had anticipated, or packed for. I didn't have any shorts. I was planning to wear yoga pants or jeans for this adventure, but really, it was just too hot, and yes, it was November!!! We ran out of time to be able to make it to a store to buy shorts (and no one sells shorts anymore in Nov.), so I had to borrow some shorts from Lavonna. I realize I didn't make the best fashion statement, but I'm an old mom now and don't really care. I just wanted to be comfortable and not sweat my tail end off. We got a few good laughs from my ensemble!

One of the cool things about Sprocket Rocket is that they take pictures for you and post them online so you can get them later. It was nice not to have to pull out my phone to snap pictures!















After the bike bar, we hung around on Broadway some. We went into some bars and walked around and people watched. It's crazy how packed some of the bars were, even in the middle of the day. I love it how you can go into a bar at any time of day and there's always live music playing.

Brent and Thomas at Tootsie's

Catherine and me at Tootsie's

We had to get back to Lavonna's so that we could get ready for our evening plans. This one was hands down the best thing we did in Nashville!!!

First up - dinner at The Farm House. This place was OK, but no one was really all that hungry and Catherine wasn't feeling great, so we ate some and were ready to move on! 

Dinner at The Farm House

We walked a few blocks and got to our next destination...

The Ryman Auditorium. Yep, we got to go to The Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman. One word: INCREDIBLE!!!!! We all unanimously agreed that this was the pinnacle of our trip. Lavonna and Clyde were so kind to get these tickets for us and we were so thankful! 

So excited!!!

We got to see Connie Smith, Chuck Wicks, Bobby Osborne & The Rocky Top X-Press, Mike Snider, William Michael Morgan, LOCASH, Ricky Skaggs, The Whites, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and Bradley Walker. 

Every one of the performers was so good! I love how many different acts you get to see and how diverse the styles of music were. The acoustics in the Ryman are renowned and the sound was amazing. It was such a great time. A definite "must do" for anyone going to Nashville!

The next morning, we went to brunch at Josephine and this was probably my favorite meal of our trip. The restaurant is located in this really cool area of town. After brunch we walked around the 12 South neighborhood and checked out some stores, window shopped and just took in the vibe of the area. 

Reese Witherspoon's shop, Draper James.
It was so cute! I liked the clothes and they
offered you a sweet tea as soon as you walk in!

Actually, correction, Catherine and I walked around and checked things out. The guys found a brewery and drank a few beers.

It was Saturday and even though the Tigers weren't playing at home, they still had a game to play, which meant that we had a football game to watch! We checked in on the local Clemson club bar and decided to go there and watch with the Tiger faithful. 

Tigers in Nashville

One of Thomas's fraternity brothers is President
of the Nashville Clemson Club. Cool to run
in to him!

Oh, and guess who else we ran in to!!!! Nick Eason! Nick used to play for Clemson back when we were there and he currently coaches for the Tennessee Titans. I was so pumped! We had to casually ask if we could take a picture with him. And by casually, I mean that I was dying inside and being a total fan!

The bar, Tin Roof, was cool and they had some great specials. I was surprised at the number of people that showed up to watch the game. Go Tigers!

Despite some stressful moments, Clemson won the game!!! Woo hoo! The bar erupted! 

Stressful moments as shown by Brent, who could not sit down at the table. He watched the entire game like this! LOL

We were on top of the world after the game, which was a big one, and we had a very, very fun ride back to Lavonna's house!

Then had some more fun there!

We, for some reason, went back to out to Broadway after this!?!?! I think I felt the need to go Honky Tonkin'. 

We checked out 2 bars - Robert's Western World, which was highly recommended to us by our Rocket Sprocket driver. He told us that they would have the best music and the best musicians. He was right. Then we stopped by The Stage, which has fun music to dance to, but we weren't really feeling it at that point. 

At Robert's

The band at Robert's - so talented!
This guitar player was awesome! He's only like 17!

The next morning was Sunday and it was time to go home. It was a little bittersweet that our fun long weekend was totally over and we had a long drive home, but we were all ready to get back to see all 6 of our boys!!

The best part about the drive?!?!?! The leaves! They were gorgeous! I probably commented about the leaves 10 times on the drive. The colors were fantastic and I couldn't stop staring at them!

Check out the colors through the windshield

So long, Nashville! Thanks for the fun times and the memories.

The next trip for #bostonpartners?!?! TBD. Stay tuned. 

Suzy and MaSha were at our house keeping the boys for us. We must have passed Suzy on the interstate at some point, because we left before she arrived on Thursday and she had to get back on the road to Knoxville on Sunday before we got home. I think the boys had a great time with those 2 sweet ladies though! Stokes and William even got to go to a gymnastics birthday party for a friend!

Super hero gymnasts. How cute!!!