Tennessee, Nashville: Birthplace of Country Music and Tristan

Tennessee - state #6 on our tour around the United States during the summer of 2007 - was where two of Kyle's cousins, Kimberly and Carmen, lived. They were sisters, first cousins of Kyle, and they grew up in the same hometown where Kyle grew up, in Fort Smith (Arkansas). As a result, they were all very close and it was appropriate that we added a stop in Nashville to visit them during our year away from the UK.

Kimberly was Kyle's age and Carmen was about seven years younger than both of them. Kimberly had moved to Nashville from Miami (Florida) in January of the same year that we visited, but Carmen had been living there with her husband, Marshall, for a few years. Carmen recently had a baby boy, Tristan, and that was one of the reasons that Kimberly moved closer to her sister; another reason was that she had achieved her national paralegal certification and she wanted a change from the Miami pace of life. She subsequently got a job in Nashville, working in a firm downtown.

The bedrooms were used to treat wounded soldiers and there were bloodstains on the floor where the operating tables had been placed

Despite the primary reason for us visiting the southern state of Tennessee being Kyle's family, we were also quite excited to travel there because neither of us had been to the city before, but had always heard good things about the place. We ended up having a great visit with his two cousins and Tristan, but unfortunately we were not able to see Marshall because he was on the road working; he handled lighting for concerts and was in the middle of a US tour with a big country music star at the time of our visit.

Introductions have been given, so let's get to the nitty gritty of Nashville, so you can get a little bit of education whilst reading this story of ours. Throughout the 19th century, Nashville was one of the leading political and social centres of the developing American nation. Former Presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk were from Tennessee and country music was "born" in Nashville, from its original form of "bluegrass" music. Opryland began as a simple radio broadcast in 1925, showcasing country music as it grew up over the years into what it is today, with its vast amounts of followers; the place had since become a live-entertainment phenomenon located in the centre of Nashville, showcasing all kinds of music.

In addition to country music, Nashville and the surrounding areas were quite involved in the Civil War. The historic town of Franklin, located about 15 miles from Nashville, was where the Carnton Plantation home was located. Carnton Plantation was an antebellum (that means "belonging to the period immediately prior to the Civil War") plantation home that was used as a Civil War field hospital when the fighting began. Located outside the home was a Confederate cemetery, home to 1,500 fallen soldiers who died during the war. We were taken to this amazing place, rich with history, on one of our afternoons with Kimberly and Carmen.

Kimberly is a traveller with as much passion as we have, so it was to no surprise when we arrived at the Nashville airport and she promptly picked us up at the baggage claim area. We were in for a shock when our bags had arrived at the carousel before we got there (usually baggage claim in the States takes forever), but were relieved that Kimberly was already at the airport, ready to pick us up. She not only was at the airport, but she also had a full itinerary for our stay, something that we were very impressed with and that was completely aligned to our style of travelling. When she told us that she had taken off work during the time that we were there, we knew that good times would be in store for us.

Before heading out to see some of the sights of the city, Kimberly took us to her new house (congrats on the purchase!), which was only about ten minutes from downtown, a very convenient location. She was still in the middle of remodeling and personalising the place, but what she had already achieved in a short space of time was very impressive, and we could see how cosy the place would be when she finished everything. It was already cosy as it was, so she didn't have much more to go!

After our bags were put inside the house, we headed to the downtown area, to check out all the fuss there. The first place that Kimberly took us to was the Farmers Market, next to Bicentennial Park; she parked her car in her office building's garage and we walked from there to the market and park. We were very impressed with the many varieties of fruits and vegetables for sale in the market, some of which we didn't even recognise. The quality of the food was high and reminded us of our days exploring markets in Asia, since the setup was very similar (although the Tennessee market looked much cleaner). We ate lunch at Farmers Market but all of the food we ate on the trip will be described closer to the bottom of this page.

Bicentennial Park was very nice and was added to the downtown area in 1996. Nashville also had a Centennial Park with a large replica of the Parthenon inside the park, and we visited that park the next day. The Parthenon replica was built between the years 1921-1931, with permanent materials when the first one they had built, during the Centennial celebrations in 1896, started to fall apart due to the materials used. You may be asking yourself why there was a Parthenon replica in the United States; the reason was because Athens was the sister city to Nashville and, therefore, the Parthenon was set up to commemorate the relationship. For those of you who don't know, a sister city is one where the demographics are shared with another city.

One thing we have taken away about Nashville was the pride that the city took in its history, which was evident with the two parks that we visited, as well as during our walk around the downtown area with Kimberly on our first day there. Back to Bicentennial Park, there were many statues and plaques with historical facts etched into them, even things embedded into the sidewalks, all throughout the park, explaining what happened as Nashville came into being over the years. There was a concrete and marble timeline that ran along the sides of the park, explaining everything from how the land formed during the prehistoric periods, up until more recent history, with the Civil War and everything afterwards.

In addition to the timeline, there were blocks of the sidewalk with Tennessee county information in the centre of each, letting us know about all of the various areas within the state, where they were located and some demographics. Finally, at the front entrance to the park, there was an enormous map of Tennessee carved into the concrete floor, which had the major highways and roads, cities, rivers and counties marked. Inside the park was a large, open grass field, for people to picnic on and play sports. There was also a small outdoor ampitheatre, where we imagined music concerts or plays were probably performed. It was a very nice park!

For the rest of that afternoon, we walked through the downtown area, passing by the state capitol building, many statues of different Presidents who were from Tennessee, sports arenas, government buildings, restaurants, cafes and bars. There was one scary moment during our walk when an apparently homeless person approached us, asking us where we were from. We said London and the man started walking with us as we moved down the street. He was wearing large overalls and nothing underneath, so not only looked like a homeless person but a real redneck, who may have been carrying a shotgun underneath his clothes. We hurried along, with Kimberly in the lead to get to another part of downtown as quickly as possible, to avoid a certain death.

We took a walk down Broadway, where many of the famous country music bars were located. There were many souvenir shops, too, and Ryman Auditorium was located off Broadway. Ryman Auditorium was where country music was born from its original bluegrass music roots and was very well-known in the music industry. Nashville's downtown had a nice mix of old buildings, from the early 1900's, and newer skyscrapers and modern buildings, such as the "Batman" and "R2D2" buildings. The Shelby Street Pedestrian Bridge was a great way to see all of downtown and its uniqueness, even though it was a little bit cloudy on our first day.

All three of us were pretty tired from walking around all afternoon in the heat, so we were happy to leave downtown and head toward Carmen's house, to visit with her and her new son. Tristan had just woken up from a nap and wasn't too energetic or interactive, so we spent the first part of the evening playing with Glasgow, Bailey and Keira, the three hyper and attention-loving dogs at Carmen's house. Glasgow belonged to Kimberly and the other two dogs belonged to Carmen and Marshall, but all three animals were related. Bailey fathered Glasgow and Keira, even though they were much bigger than he was and completely black, whereas he was white, black and grey. There are some pictures of the dogs in the photo album for this journal entry, so be sure to check them out if you are a dog lover. If don't like dogs, then at least look at the photos of the people and sights that we saw during our trip. In other words, you better look at all of the photos!

Dinner that evening can be read about down below - we did tell you this above, if you remember - and after dinner, we headed back to Kimberly's to get some sleep. The next morning, after having been woken up by Glasgow jumping on each of us and licking us to death, and after breakfast (see farther below for details on the yummy pancakes we ate), we walked around the Vanderbilt University area of town, looking inside some of the shops, but mainly taking in the feel of the neighbourhood. We were with Kimberly, Carmen and Tristan; fortunately, Carmen was also able to take time off work when we were there, to hang out with us.

It was really hot that afternoon, too hot for Tristan to be outside, so we hopped back into Carmen's car and she drove us all to Opryland and through some other neighbourhoods in Nashville that we had not seen yet, including Centennial Park. Next to Opryland was a large Bass Pro Shop and we asked to be taken there, to look for something that we needed for our trip. Carmen needed to take Tristan home for his nap at that point and Kimberly was tired, so we had them drop us off at a local coffee shop, Portland Brew, to plan out the many reunions that were coming up in Oklahoma and Texas, at the start of our road trip. We got a lot of planning done and when Kimberly and Carmen were ready for dinner, they came and picked us up.

When we returned to Kimberly's house from dinner, we watched a DVD that we had brought to the US, so that we could watch it and then sell it or give it away. "The Man", with Samuel Jackson and Eugene Levy, was a silly comedy that ended up being more enjoyable than any of us thought it would be. After the movie was over, it was just past midnight and we all went to bed, exhausted from another full day of sightseeing and eating, especially eating. The next day was no easier on us, as more sights and more eating was inevitable.

Babysitting was on the cards for us in the morning; Carmen had dropped Tristan off at Kimberly's house so she could run some errands, and Kimberly left him in our care while she took Glasgow to Carmen's, where he would stay with the other dogs during our day out. Tristan must have been feeling a little unwell for the past couple of days, or maybe he just wasn't used to us, because that morning he was much livelier and attentive when we were playing with him. It was nice for Kyle to spend some time with him, as it was the first time that he had gotten to see his new relative.

Before heading to Franklin, a small town outside of Nashville, where we would be eating lunch, we went to Molly's (mother-in-law to Carmen) house to meet up with her and to see her two large, slobbering, smelly basset hounds. The day before, we had seen a basset hound puppy in Centennial Park and, even though the puppy was adorable, the older, full-grown bassets were not so cute. Some dogs change too much when they grow out of puppyhood and this was one breed that justified that statement, the poor things. Molly joined us for lunch, by the way.

After lunch and after bidding goodbye to Molly, Carmen and Kimberly took us to Carnton Plantation so we could learn a little bit about what happened there during the Civil War. A famous book was written about Carnton Plantation and the Battle of Franklin, called "Widow of the South". We decided to purchase a copy in the gift shop, so we could read it when we were laying on beaches in the South Pacific for five weeks after leaving the United States in the second week of September. You read that right - five weeks island hopping in the South Pacific, a tropical paradise, in French Polynesia (Bora Bora, Moorea, Tahiti, etc), the Cook Islands (Rarotonga and Aitutaki) and Fiji (islands unknown, but we will most likely backpack around the Coral Islands there). Jealous yet?

The Carnton Plantation home was a well-preserved, marvelous, grand structure situated in Franklin. The home was mostly used as a field hospital during the Civil War when the North and South were fighting to abolish slavery in the United States, between the years 1861-1865. We went on a tour, given by an excellent guide, and saw all of the rooms in the house and learned what they were each used for; some of the bedrooms were used to treat wounded soldiers and there were bloodstains on the floor where the operating tables had been placed. Many of the tools that were used during the operations were also on display and it was creepy to think about the archaic method of surgery that had to be employed back in those days. The Battle of Franklin was one of the bloodiest battles (it lasted five hours and 9,500 soldiers were killed) during the Civil War and the hospital was definitely kept busy during that time.

After an educational afternoon at the plantation home, we went to a Best Buy electronics store to purchase a new camera to use during the remainder of our trip. Having taken over 10,000 photos since we started travelling in January 2007, we understood how the wear and tear made the camera focus button go kaplooey (this was a word that Judy - Kyle's mum - used a lot, and we just had to borrow it for this story). There were some positive things that came out of the new camera purchase and we found a newer model of the same camera that we had been using, a Canon PowerShot digital camera with image stabilisation.

The new camera model was the exact size and shape as the previous model, with the same style and placement of buttons, which meant that the underwater digital camera case that we had purchased for the previous model would still work with the new camera! The new model had some welcome improvements, such as better ISO settings for bright light situations, face recognition software to ensure that people's faces were not blurred or some funky colour, and also a higher megapixel setting than the previous one (8 megapixels instead of 6). Even though we had to pay money for a new camera, it was worth the investment since we were not able to manually focus when taking pictures with the old one.

Another great thing about buying the new camera at Best Buy was that we were able to talk to them about the problem with the old one. Since the focus button was worn out before the year manufacturer's warranty had expired, Best Buy offered to send the camera off to Canon, in order for it to be fixed. We couldn't wait two and a half weeks to receive the camera back, so we still bought a new one, but Kyle's mum has already received the amended old camera and will hopefully use it, so it doesn't go to waste.

Carmen and Kimberly didn't want to take Tristan out of the car while we shopped in Best Buy, so they waited in the car for us. We thought that we were only going to be a few minutes, but we ended up being inside the store for almost an hour. We have to offer a special thanks to them for allowing us to take care of our business there, and we hope that they weren't too sore with us for taking so long. When we left Best Buy, we were dropped off at Portland Brew again, to continue our travel planning, whilst Kimberly and Carmen napped again.

When dinner time came around, we went to Carmen's house, where she and Kimberly ordered Brooklyn-style pizza from Dominos Pizza, a new style that immediately became our favourite, and something that we have ordered many times since leaving Nashville. We know that this "food" item should have been included in the next few paragraphs, with the other mentions of food during our trip, but Brooklyn-style pizza from Dominos received five gold stars from us and was worthy of a special mention.

On our first day in Nashville, we decided to eat lunch in the downtown Farmers Market because there was a large variety of food from around the world available at little food stalls there. Dan decided to go for a Jamaican lunch but Kimberly and Kyle opted to eat a Turkish meal. All of our food was good, but the plates were large, so we probably should have shared a plate for lunch. Dinner that first night was with Kimberly and Carmen (and Tristan!), at a Mexican restaurant called Rose Pepper. There, we ate a lot of chips, salsa and queso (hot, melted cheese dip), but then we shared a large ground beef chimichanga with rice and refried beans on the side. We can't remember what Kimberly and Carmen ate that evening, but they enjoyed their food as much as we did. Tristan ordered extra spicy jalapeno hot sauce to be poured over his Mexican beefsteak dish, with three large frozen margaritas on the side. Just kidding - a 5-1/2 month year old baby would probably only be able to drink one of margaritas.

On our second day in Nashville, we started the day with an enormous breakfast at Pancake Pantry, a Nashville tradition in the Vanderbilt University area. We had pancakes (surprise), bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese melted inside, hash browns and - ugh - grits. We were told that we should try grits because they were a southern specialty. Kyle had never grown up eating them so he had never really tried them before. Since they were non-existent in Essex, where Dan grew up, he also hadn't eaten them before. Let's just say that we were both happy to have never eaten them before and we were both happy to agree that neither of us would ever touch them again. We didn't have lunch that day because breakfast was a little late and our bowels were backed up to China from all of the food we had been eating lately. By dinnertime, at 9:00pm, we finally had our appetites back and we enjoyed some delicious Asian food that was cooked right in front of us at Genghis Grill, a Mongolian barbecue restaurant where we chose our own (fresh) ingredients and the meals were cooked right in front of us.

On our final day in Nashville, we skipped breakfast the next morning since we were all still full of Mongolian barbecue from the night before; it also helped that we knew to expect a huge all-you-can-eat lunch in Franklin, the small town that we visited on our last full day in Nashville. Monell's Restaurant served southern cooking, family style; therefore, the restaurant patrons sat down at long tables with other guests and they passed large bowls of food around the table to share amongst everyone. There were salads to start with, followed by vegetables and then meat dishes. The menu changed every few days and on the day we went there, we were served dishes that included cole slaw, potato salad, green beans, fried potatoes, corn pudding, fried chicken, vegetarian lasagne and battered catfish. That was only about half of the dishes we were served; we can't remember the others, there were so many!

On our final morning at Kimberly's house, we woke up really early - 6:00am - to pack our things and get ready to be taken to the airport. Somehow we had the impression that our flight was due to leave Nashville that morning at 8:00am, but we found out, upon check-in, that our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 10:00am. Instead of waiting so long for our flight, the woman working at the American Airlines check-in desk put us on the standby list for an earlier flight to St. Louis, Missouri. That was the city we were travelling through to get to Little Rock International Airport, our final destination by plane that day, before driving in a car to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where we would spend our final few days there before leaving for good this year.

In Hot Springs, we had planned to spend our time finalising plans and packing for our road trip across the southwest United States. Before the road trip started, though, we had a few more stops in Arkansas in order to say goodbye to Kyle's family and also to a friend from Springfield, Missouri, whom you should have already read about in our Springfield journal entry. If you haven't read about her yet, then shame on you...