We left early in the morning and got into the Nashville area around lunchtime.  I know one of my college teammates owns and operates a bar & pub in north Nashville, so we stopped by there for some lunch.  Since the wedding is in West Nashville we decided to spend the afternoon visiting colleges.

Tessa is now a high school freshman, so as much as it pains me to think it, she is going to have to find a college to attend in the next few years.  We started off at Vanderbilt University, and then hit Belmont University and Lipscomb University on the way. Between Belmont & Lipscomb we drove down 12th Avenue S and what a cool area that has become.

We dropped the girls off at the Hilton in Bellevue (I used to live in that city too), and then Heather and I went to the wedding around 4p.  It was a beautiful wedding for Sam (Ross) & Brandon Liskey.  The venue was Loveless Events which allowed outdoor weddings, but the weather just didn’t cooperate.  We ended up leaving around 9p and picked up the girls and headed downtown Nashville.

The dowtown area is completely reformed.  When I lived here, 2nd Avenue was the hot spot – Club Merre Bulles, The Mix Factory, the Underground – all gone now.  2nd Avenue still has the Wildhorse Saloon and Hard Rock Cafe, but everything is now on Broadway.  Pretty much the whole street is bars by country music artists from Jason Aldean, Alan Jackson, and Garth has one coming soon.  Justin Timberlake even owns one of the bars.  The Stage is now 2 stories, and the little old world famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge is now 2 stories as well.  I didn’t recognize the place!

We hung out for several hours and the girls got to experience Nashville in 2022.  We then headed back to the hotel to turn in.

Sunday 9/4

We got up and decided to go back to 12th Avenue S to see the shops and grab lunch.  After walking down the street and visiting the shops a bit, we decided on lunch at Burger Up.  Heather got a massive burger… and finished the whole thing.  We then headed over to the Opry Mills for more shopping.  We tried the Dragon’s Breath which was a crazy experience.  We then went over to the Opryland Hotel and hung out there for awhile.  

Since we were close to my alma mater, Cumberland University, we decided to drive there to show the girls their 4th college of the weekend.  There was a lot of renovation at CU and a new entrance to Memorial Hall.  After walking around outside a bit, I took the girls into Memorial Hall and was showing the girls the hall of previous university presidents.  Then all of a sudden a door opened and the current president of the University, Dr. Paul Stumb walked out.  He said “Trent?”. We later laughed that he said the last person he would have thought to run into outside his office at 7p on a Sunday was a former board trustee.

This was a cool experience for the girls and they got their picture with Paul.  He then explained the reason he was in the office is the night before 5 CU football players got into a DUI-related accident and one of them died.  Truly sad.

Hearing this, we left Paul to attend to that matter and drove to our hotel in Goodlettsville.  We stopped for dinner at O’Charleys and then headed to the hotel.

A great trip to Nashville!