Adventures in Travel: Nashville

Unless you were living under a rock, you probably heard all about the Solar Eclipse last month. Living in Miami I wasn’t in the path of totality, so my boyfriend and I, along with a few friends, traveled to Nashville to get the full experience of the total Solar Eclipse and explore a new city.

There was 6 of us in total, three couples. Our best bet was AirbnB. I’ve never used AirbnB, this was my first, but I loved it. The house had three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Everything in the house was brand new and we could tell it was used just for AirbnB, no personal items. It didn’t feel like anyone actually lived there. My friend Liz made all the arrangements and she communicated with the owner about any questions we had. If you are looking for an Airbnb in the Nashville area, I highly recommend you check out this great house in West Nashville.

The first night we checked out some of the bars Downtown and then headed to dinner at Monell’s. AMAZING. They don’t take reservations, so you have to arrive early and put your name on the list and prepare to wait. It’s family style and you will be seated with other people at a large table. The wait is long, but it is worth it. Once you are seated they start passing around large dishes to share of biscuits, gravy, mashed potatoes, cream corn, mac n’ cheese, fried chicken, catfish, pulled pork, and I’m sure something else that I forgot about. You can eat as much as you want and the servers were great. If I ever find myself in Nashville again I will definitely make sure I go to Monell’s again.

The next day we headed to Pinewood Social. It reminded me of something you would find in Wynwood, very hipster. Along with a great restaurant, there is bowling, swimming, and all sorts of things to do here. We had an amazing brunch followed by some bowling. I’m a terrible bowler, but it won’t stop me from having some fun.

We weren’t going to go to Nashville and not tour a distillery. We went on a great tour of the Corsair Distillery, where we met this handsome guy Cooper.

The entire reason for our trip was to view the solar eclipse. We originally had planned to do a hike at a park, but it was freaking hot. We still went to the park, just skipped the hike. We grabbed some stuff at CVS, like a picnic blanket, whiffle ball, cold bottles of water, and a mist fan. Getting to see the eclipse was amazing and my words can hardly do it justice. For the two minutes when the sun was completely eclipsed, the sky went dark, all the night bugs started making noise and the temperature dropped.

Monday night Kevin and I were on our own, all of our friends had traveled back home. We had one more night. A lot of people were in town for the eclipse so hotel rates were high, but we booked one night at The Alexis Inn & Suites Nasvhille Airport. The staff were extremely helpful and friendly and there was a great complimentary breakfast.

For our last night, we were exhausted but didn’t want to waste it at our hotel. I looked at the map and noticed we weren’t far from the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. I’ve stayed at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando and I’ve heard about the one in Nashville and how massive it is. I knew they had plenty of restaurants and cool things to see so we hoped in an Uber to check it out.

This place is MASSIVE. We had dinner at the Solario Cantina, a casual Mexican restaurant. We had to wait for about twenty minutes for our table, which was fine, that gave us time to explore the sprawling grounds of the beautiful atriums. After dinner, we did the boat ride, which had a cute Alice and Wonderland theme. I grabbed some gelato and we watched the nightly fountain show. It was a perfect calm relaxing evening after such a busy weekend.

On our last day, we did a bus tour of Nashville, because we still had not seen everything. There are about 15 stops and you can hop on and off all day, we only had until lunchtime because of our flight, but it gave us enough time to enjoy the entire tour. We grabbed a quick bite to eat before we headed back to the hotel to check out.

Overall we had a fantastic time and would definitely head back there. We’ve already been looking up information for the next solar eclipse and where it will be.