Downtown Nashville

After breakfast, we wanted to walk it off...alright, more like I wanted to walk it off because I felt like a ridiculous fattie. Stanley somehow walked away from brunch unscathed, I don't know how.

We were strolling around when we saw this park across the street. Why not right? We start walking around in it before I realize it's the Bicentennial Park, which is exactly the park where I wanted to take Stanley anyway! There were war memorials and fountains and it was actually a very, very pretty park. And on this particularly hot day, it had the right amount of shade.

We stumbled upon this map of Nashville that was carved (perhaps?) into the ground. It had all the major and minor cities in Tennessee on it and the freeways criss-crossed the state. It was pretty cool to look at. There were also maps of the topography of Tennessee, of the legendary music spots in the state, of the river systems...man, Tennesseans really love their state.

We walk around some more, all the while catching up about life and school and work, and then see this huge building on a hill. A huge hill, mind you, but we decide to tackle it anyway. A couple minutes later (after some rest time for me and some time contemplating how this elderly man beat us up the stairs), we find the State Capitol Building!

Now, a sidenote about this building. I understand signs are important to tell people where they can and cannot go. But does it really make sense to have a "Door closed, please use the West entrance" sign on ALL the entrances to the building? Really?

There comes a point in an adventure when you have to make a decision, explore the library to our right or check out that "pillar-y" building to the left? Forget the library, we're both done with school, we headed to the "pillar-y" building. A brief escape into a free museum to take advantage of their air-conditioning and a quick walk around the building looking at the Vietnam/Korean War memorials and what do we then stumble upon?

A food festival! Thank you to the food gods and to our strange aptitude to make good decisions about where to explore next. It was the "Taste of Music City" festival, where different restaurants come out and sell portions of their food at lower (maybe?) prices. You buy tickets and then give them 2/3/4 tickets depending on the dish.

I was still stuffed from the brunch but we ended up getting a gumbo-type dish, vanilla chocolate yogurt (which Stanley and I were convinced was spiked with some Jack Daniel's), and a plate of meatballs/chicken wings/bruschetta! It was totally my cup of tea to just walk around the festival, peruse the different restaurant menus, sample a little of this and that, and soak it all in.

The best part though? The awesome air-conditioned Jack Daniel's trailer museum! I'm not even kidding...we walked through displays upon displays of how whiskey is made and got to sniff different types of whiskey (final product and close-to-final-product samples). Oh Jack...