Base Guitars and Vanderbilt

The hotels are amazing, let me just say. I slept like a rock last night. Not because I was tired, but because I was so comfortable. The beds were amazingly soft and the pillows were nice and plush. The showers were great too. I don’t think I’ve ever had a shower that was instantly hot like that before. It was like I was in an alternate reality. And then I got an omelet, some potatoes, fruit, and a muffin, all of which were amazing. It tasted a lot like food from back home.

After we ate, we walked down to Avis to pick up the rental car. The woman helping us was very nice, and even helped us when we came to find out there was a major setback in us being able to obtain a car. Which was cool, because even though people help us back home, it’s like “Oh I have to; I’m not doing this to be nice.” We ended up getting a black Kia and spent about 5 minutes figuring out how to work the darned radio because it would make navigation a lot easier.

Once we finally got that figured out and found a place to park, we ended up heading to the Country Music Hall of Fame, because hello, Music City USA anyone? It was quite fascinating to see the history of country music and the puppet show we ended up in towards the end. Probably the most entertaining thing about the museum was seeing Jimmy Fallon trying to milk a cow, as well as the dresses that some of the female artists wore. Half of them were really over the top and shiny and I didn’t really like them to be honest.

Some of the outfits from the displays.

After we left we went to go grab lunch at a place called Southern, which had some really great house-made chipotle ketchup. We also tried sweet tea, which wasn’t as sweet as one would think it would be. The whole place was pleasant and fancy too. But the restroom was weird because it had a movie playing in there, and the sink wasn’t even a sink-it was just a counter that tilted down towards the mirror and drained off.

After we took a quick stop at the hotel, we went to Vanderbilt for our site tour. The woman giving the presentation was named Kayla and she recently had graduated from the university herself. She told us a lot about the university in terms of how they operate, the dorms, how they look at the applications, and the financial aid. The financial aid is critical--they cover 100% of the needs and there are no loans! But the most important part was how the professors try to really get to know the students and how they prepare the first-year students.

When that was completed, we went on an awesome campus tour lead by a rising junior named Elizabeth who is majoring in civil engineering. She and I talked a lot during walking from place to place about what to see and do from where we came from, and we clicked very easily. Out of everything on the tour, the dorms were the most surprising with how nice they were. They were nice, roomy and they looked very comfortable. We also met some cool students our age named Emily and Jake, who were from San Antonio and Indianapolis, respectively.

The tour came and went, and we stopped at the bookstore to get our Vanderbilt merch before heading to the soda shop near the hotel for dinner and milkshakes. The food was amazing, the service was just subpar at best.

Today was a really fun day in the city and I cannot wait for what tomorrow brings!