Day 2 - Our First Full Day in Nashville

Today we had our first full day in Nashville, and it started out at 7:30 AM for me when I woke up. I met the rest of my cohort in the lobby of the hotel a half hour later for breakfast, which was really good. The hotel surprised me with how much of a variety they had for breakfast there. I was used to less extravagant affairs, so I was pretty impressed. I personally had a couple of hard boiled eggs (my usual), some oatmeal with banana on top, and some potatoes. There was a lot more to be had, but I was already feeling full by then. Maybe tomorrow I'll try out the waffle machine!

After breakfast, we walked down a few blocks towards downtown to pick up our rental car. We have a small black Kia sedan, which just fits all five of us at a time. We wasted no time at all hooking up a phone to the stereo system. I was the lucky holder of the only connected phone, so I also got to input the directions to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where we were going next. As we got closer to the museum, which is located in the heart of Nashville, we were able to get a better glimpse of the city than we had before. I personally liked what we saw. Nashville is a really pretty town, and I noticed there was next to no trash and almost no homeless people.

Outside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Once we had gotten to the museum (after spending a little while looking for parking) we grabbed our tickets and went in. Before going in, I had little or no clue about country music. It was really fun being able to look around and see for myself just what country music is all about, where it came from, and who the biggest stars are. I only really recognized a few names like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Taylor Swift, but there were plenty of other country stars also represented there. Because I'm a big car guy, however, I personally found the three cars they had there to be the coolest part. One belonged to Elvis, his gold plated Cadillac; another was a turbo charged 4.9 liter Pontiac Trans-Am from Smokey and the Bandit II; and the last one was Webb Pierce's tricked out convertible, with pistols everywhere - on the hood, for the door handles, and even inside the car. It was a crazy car to see. The real star of the show was the music, however, and I think that is a definite part of what I'm going to take back to the Bay Area from Music City, USA. 

The Smokey and the Bandit II car

Once we had completed our tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (man, that's a bit of a mouthful) we went to a place called the Southern for lunch. The Southern was, well, Southern. Our waitress (who's name was Paige) was nice enough to only charge us for two sweet teas, even though we had more like five. It was our first time trying sweet tea, or real sweet tea, I should say. It was quite good. If you can imagine it, it was pretty sweet too. The tea was strong enough though, so it still tasted like tea. And the tea was only the beginning of the goodness. The food was just great. I had an "Old Southern Cheeseburger" that was one of the best burgers I have ever had the pleasure to eat. The meat was absolutely perfect, and the whole thing practically melted in your mouth. I don't think we've had a bad food related experience in Nashville yet. I like that.

At The Southern

When we had finished at The Southern, we headed over to a riverside park to pass some time before our tour at Vanderbilt. There we saw some swings, Joceline learned of one of her favorite bands who were playing tonight, and we saw the Cumberland River for the first time up close. It was very peaceful, even with the pedal bars going around all over the place.

These bars are basically street cars, but everyone faces inwards and pedals while having a beer. It was really funny watching all of them go by, and a lot of them were (from what we could tell) bachelorette parties. We even saw one such group standing by one of the bars, as they had just finished pedaling, and we got a quick picture with them to prove we weren't crazy and this is an actual thing people do. It was fun, but we had to get back to the car so we could get to our tour on time.

A view of downtown Nashville, from the park we found

After a quick pit stop at the hotel, we drove (well, Ms. Hansen did) over to the Student Life Center. We easily found our way to where we needed to be, and sat in the front row by the stage. It was great to learn all about the school we were going to spend three weeks at, and I found out how impressive Vanderbilt really is. I knew it was a great school, and I had looked at it a little bit, but man is it a good school. We only spent part of the time inside seated though, and our tour guide took us around the campus. Our tour guide's name was Elizabeth, and I think we'll be seeing more of her when we're doing the VSA because she works at the Barnes and Noble at Vanderbilt (which the VSA often uses, according to her.) She is a rising Junior at Vanderbilt, and had switched her major from civil engineering to communications of science and technology, which seemed like an interesting major. She was able to answer a lot of questions I had about the engineering school and just Vanderbilt in general. She liked our group a lot because we asked a lot of questions, and oh boy did we. She was able to answer everyone, and helpfully too, so way to go Elizabeth! 

The other highlight of our tour (besides, of course, touring Vanderbilt's super pretty campus) was meeting another boy at the tour named Jake. Jake and I hit it off immediately, I started talking to him about triathlons after I heard he did triathlons and we talked about a bunch of stuff after that. School and home, mostly. He is from Indianapolis, and he was a pretty cool guy. He says he wants to study physics, especially elementary particle physics. We talked for the rest of the tour, but split up as our group went to the Barnes and Noble to buy our swag.

At the Barnes and Noble it wasn't too exciting, but I got a nice quarter-zip grey sweatshirt to take home to wear. It was after the bookshop that was more interesting.

It was getting a little late after the bookshop, so we went to the hotel to think about what we wanted to do next. We all decided we wanted to eat dinner at the Elliston Place Soda Shop, because we had passed it a few times and it looked good. That was an understatement. The food was really good, but only after a really long wait. They have some service troubles, but man is their food good. I would definitely go again, but I would hope they wouldn't keep us waiting so long next time. I felt kinda bad for them, because you could tell they were struggling a little bit. Still, the grilled herb chicken I had was fantastic.

After we ate, we started back to the hotel. At Jamba Juice though, we saw Jake again! It turns out he was staying at the same hotel as us! Not on the same floor though, that would have been way too much of a coincidence. We exchanged numbers and invited him to go for a swim with us. He said he totally would, and that's how I ended up in a pool at 9:00 at night talking to someone I just met with the rest of my cohort. Not bad for day two. Day three should be even better!