For Spring Break this year my 3 best friends and I decided to venture on over to God's country for a nice little visit to Nashville and Graceland. Our road trip was quite the adventure, especially considering the short amount of time that was actually spent outside of the car, but it was filled with many picture opportunities (a total of 755 to be exact) and tons of laughs with my favorite people. Cheesy I know :)
To start this adventure we drove the 9 hours over to Nashville (our first stop) and along the drive we see this, directly in front of us...
Scared? No way! It's just a massive 14,000 wheeler truck coming RIGHT AT US. It's okay though, we're tough and we somehow survived, without even a single scratch. Yeah we might be superheros.
So we finally arrive to Nashville, or well our hotel in Nashville anyway, we didn't arrive IN actual downtown Nashville until the next day.
Our first stop on the Nashville itinerary: The Grand Ole Opry. But, of course, we have to get kicked out of something first. So what's better than the mall in Opryland? The famous last shot taken before mall cop on a segue yelled at us...
And it wasn't even that great of a picture, thanks mall cop. Too bad you came AFTER we took a million pictures inside the Gibson store. :)
So we decide that we're done being rebels in the mall for now, and that we should probably head over to the Opry House for our tour. We have a few minutes to kill though so we decide to take pictures outside of the building before going in, and much to our surprise we come across these crazy hooligans...
What might they be doing you ask? We didn't know either. However, we did find out later so I guess you'll just have to keep reading to find out. :) So finally on to our wonderful (backstage) Grand Ole Opry tour...
Isn't she just such a beauty? Oh what I would do to see one of my favorite country stars perform here! Not only would it just be an amazing experience overall, but, as I learned from the tour, no matter where your seats are in the place you are still allowed to go up to the front row to take pictures. I mean seriously, oh my gosh.
After seeing where the celebrities enter, seeing their mailboxes, and seeing countless dressing rooms, we arrived here:
This would be my shadow on the FLOOR of the Grand Ole Opry stage. Not only was I extremely shocked but I was also about to explode with excitement. I was standing where all of my favorite country stars have stood? No way! And yes, it gets even better...
We got to stand (and pose as rockstars) on the circle in the middle of the stage where ALL of the singers (from the old and new opry house) have sang before. That circle is a piece of the stage taken from the old Opry house, now the Ryman auditorium. It was pretty amazing, my time at the Grand Ole Opry was very well spent.
After that tour we headed over to the Museum and dilly dallied around in there for a little bit, than came back out to the same courtyard that we were in before our tour, and saw those crazy people with the video camera's again, except this time they must have had a costume manager:
After spending some time contemplating what to do, Danella, being the fearless one of the bunch, just walks right up to them and asks them what they're doing. Their reply? Just filming the auditions for So You Think You Can Dance. Oh okay, cool, no biggie. PSHT! Yes, that's how random this trip was. We run into something like that? Insanesies. So we stayed around and watched for a while to see some soon to be stars, until one of the main guys finally tells us that maybe we should stop recording it, opps. "Kicked out" number two. Good thing we had other, more exciting, plans like eating here for lunch...
An aquarium or a restaurant? You decide. Either way it was delicious.
Before leaving Opryland we couldn't go without seeing the Opryland Hotel, which was incredibly massive.
Yeah, this was inside the hotel. INCREDIBLE. And probably also a million dollars a night and way out of our price range so we stuck with the awesome Super 8 right next to Dad's lounge. It was a very classy place.
So after being in Nashville for almost 24 hours and still not setting foot inside the actual city, we finally made it. We explored some downtown, took a few pictures, and of course, happened to have another crazy adventure involving the band Foreigner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBxbPts5tOk). We were walking down this little alley on the side of the Ryman auditorium, when we see this massive tour band van backing into the same alley that we were walking into. Another head on collision? Possibly. We move out of the way to where the crew is setting up only to find out that the van is transporting the 70's band Foreigner and that they were playing at the Ryman auditorium. At the time this meant nothing to me, psht Foreigner who is that?! But thanks to my musically inclined friends and family, I was enlightened. After standing there stunned for a while at this coincidence we eventually were forced to leave, but not without a picture:
After more wandering around Nashville we than headed back to the hotel to get ready for a night out, which was yet again another adventure.
We went to Hardrock Cafe for dinner/a "concert" because we heard some bands would be there performing. The first band included a songwriter for Rascal Flatts, Kellie Pickler, Martina McBride, and some other's...pretty darn awesome. The second band was from California and they were pretty good too, we got to talk some after with them and they were all really nice as well. However the highlight of my night was how we almost/sort of did meet a guy from Lonestar. We were waiting to talk to one of the guys from the 2nd band (also called Sara Haze/Sara Haze band so check them out they're great), who just happened to be talking to Lonestar guy (no, I don't know his name...pathetic) and Lonestar guy saw that we were waiting to talk to him and said "okay man well I'll let ya go I see these pretty ladies are waiting to talk to you, so you should go talk to them instead of staying here talking to me" He called us pretty?! Yeah I just blushed and went back to middle school. After Lonestar guy left guy from Sara Haze band decided to inform us that Lonestar guy was in fact Lonestar guy, before I had no idea who he was. It was still just as exciting though.
After that we unsuccessfully tried to go sit in some bars and listen to the live music however in all of the places you had to be over 21, boo. There ends day number 1 in Nashville.
Day two was a day of exploring downtown. Here are some pictures, enjoy.
A semi washed out black and white Nashville. Yet I still kind of like it.
Boots boots boots boots boots. If only I had a couple hundred to spend on some.
And here ends our wonderful stay in Nashville. :) Next it was off to the wonderful, totally safe, not sketchy at all, Memphis. We were only there for one night, which was probably best seeing as how the main place to go was Graceland, and we knocked that sucker out in a day. We definitely got to see everything though and it was amazing. Elvis was one awesome man.
The sign outside of our hotel...
John Lennon said it all, "Before Elvis, there was nothing." So now, some super exciting Elvis pictures...
This is Elvis' house, pretty amazing. The inside was neat to see too, especially since it hasn't been redecorated or changed at all since he died.
I mean just check out that ceiling, is that awesome or what? I think I know how I'll be decorating my first house.
During this tour I also saw something else very exciting:
Elvis Presley wore a paisley tuxedo at his wedding. Such the fashionable guy. After touring more of his house and backyard(ish) we saw his airplanes, cars, and other various exhibits involving his clothes, all of which were the bomb.com, like Elvis.
That pretty much concludes our amazing trip to Tennessee! One big massive adventure. Much more to say I'm sure however this blog is already long enough and I have no more pictures to go along with the stories, so therefore the stories aren't as exciting and I won't bore you any more.
Weeeeeelp so yea, that's all folks. This blog just goes to show you how much fun it is to be alone in your apartment the day Easter break starts. It's a blast. If you actually read all of this than props to you. I'm donezo. I hope you enjoyed this insight to my life.
Ciao,
Brittany
