Well rested, well fed and cold was how Friday morning greeted me in Nashville and with that, it was time to pay homage to the people that made Nashville Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. There is no better way to spend a few hours than at this place. The displays are so personable, you get a way-back-when until now look at how country music has grown and evolved over time and y’all even get to see Elvis’ GOLD Cadillac. As a TV addict, one of my favourite displays was about the rise of country music on TV – from the simple beginnings to the Garth Brooks extravaganzas and Reba doing ads for Fritos! The walls of records were fantastic – some you can open like little doors and when you do, the music plays! There was a special Ray Charles exhibit called ‘I can’t stop loving you’ and it wasn’t too bad. But I made a discovery that I was totally not expecting. The museum had a library!
The Frist Library and Archive was a total surprise. I have always said that the JFK Presidential Library is my dream library… well I have a new one. If I had known I would’ve booked to do a visit! Being a new museum, the Library facilities were awesome and all the exhibitions are built around the Library! So when you actually go through the beginning you look over and into the library and their compactus. It was just too exciting for words to be surrounded by Garth and all my boys AND a library!
Also, from the museum there is a satellite radio station broadcasting from within the complex and the gift shop was a great one. The gift shop is something that you just grow to expect when you visit anywhere. At Universal, every ride ended with a trip through a shop that was full of products and junk related to the ride or just junk in general. Every attraction has a gift shop. Even Gator Land had one! The gift shop for the museum was like one massive record shop with some random t-shirts and quirky books related to country life!
From here I went to explore some of the 2nd Avenue area of the riverfront – it was mighty chilly so I had some more great mexican to warm up and decided I would pay a visit to the Nashville Library as it was one place I definitely wanted to go. What I didn’t envisage encountering were two very very shady characters who asked me for change and then proceeded to follow me up this street and there was NO-ONE else around. I ducked into the library and what do you reckon – so did they. The Library is a stunning building – absolutely gorgeous but very vast in the entrance area. Due to the weather, the library was full of Nashville’s homeless – being one of the easy ways to stay warm and comfy in the cold. The library foyer had one guy standing at a huge desk and the way the library has been built it meant going into some lifts and then up to the other levels. The dodgy guys followed me to the LIFTS! I can actually say it was the only time on my trip that I felt something just wasn’t right and I didn’t feel safe at all. So I had to say ‘Stuff it!’ to the Library and just bolted into the fiction stacks way on the other side of the library and wandered and hid in there until I got angry at myself for getting spooked by two random loser guys. 🙁
After all of these adventures I was drained! Before I knew it, it was time to head back to head back as I had a huge day coming up. I walked back to the hotel through the many back streets of the Nashville area which I can say were positively desolate! The hotel was right next to the Lifeway publishing headquarters and their great giftshop where I was able to pick up some great bluegrass gospel CDs. What I couldn’t believe was the size of the headquaters, which went for what felt like blocks! The Southern Baptist Convention is alive and well in Nashville!
Release Me – Deborah Conway