Nashville, TN

We finally made it to Nashville and after some time (too much) spent sorting parking, we ended up just parking in the hotel.

We got dressed and made our way down to Broadway. It was totally insane. Music was coming out of every bar and restaurant for the entire two blocks. There were multi-story bars with live music on every floor as well as the rooftops. I recognized so many different country artists that had their own bars along the street.

We started off at Honky Tonk Central and the music in there was great. The band was upbeat and played a mixture of country songs and covers of well known songs like Proud Mary and Whitney Houston. The dance floor was constantly busy with people. We bought a beer to share, listened to music and sang (well, I did), and then we moved on to Dierks Bentley's bar.

We initially went up to the roof, but it was pretty dead and the music wasn't as good, we went back down to the bottom floor where it was busier. Again, we bought a beer to share and enjoyed the music. We also made a friend, a gay guy on his own from Wisconsin. He had a lot of random stories to share, and he took a lot of pictures with Allan (he definitely fancied Allan). The bar wasn't very busy, and it was getting late, so we headed to our last bar, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.

This one was well recommended online on every site we saw. When we got there it was much smaller than the other two bars we had been to. Again, we got a beer to share and started to listen to the music on the second floor. It was a group of guys playing Oasis, which wasn't too much of a surprise considering Oasis had just announced their reunion tour.

After staying up there for a bit, we came back to the first floor and listened to a country band. They played country music covers as well as a handful of pop and rock classics. While we were there, about to head out, a guy in the bar bought the whole bar a round! That kind of stuff you only see in movies! I got a beer and Allan got a Maker's Mark. We stayed almost until closing and headed back to our hotel just outside of the center of downtown.

In the morning, the free breakfast at Comfort Inn was surprisingly good! They even had a waffle maker! We stuffed ourselves then had a short walk through Music Row to see all the different production companies. We then walked back to Broadway to see all the bars in the daytime. They were all still playing music. I loved all of the live music, it was great. We also stopped at the Hall of Fame, just for a picture of the outside (too expensive) and had a walk through all the stars on the ground across the street.

Our short time in Nashville was over very (too) quickly. We agreed it would be nice to take a long weekend to see more of the sites and have a proper night out in all the bars.

Allan’s deal of the day: free round of drinks from big Steve in Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.Læs mere