- If anyone ever tells me again that America is stagnating and points to China’s skyscraper forests that sprang out of nowhere, I’ll point them to Nashville. More cranes there than at a crane festival.
- Ditto for the line about American cities being more and more alike, so that it doesn’t matter whether one lives in the suburbs of Albuquerque or Atlanta. Take a walk up and down Broadway at 1pm on a Monday, count the number of live music venues packed side to side, and tell me of any other place in the country that has the same number per meter squared.
- Corollary to the above: if you can’t stand the smell of stale beer, probably best to stay out of downtown.
- There was a time between Vanderbilt University being founded and Grand Ole Opry exploding in popularity when the city was known as the Athens of the South. This was even before they built a full-scale replica of the Parthenon on the city’s centennial, in 1897. The one from 1897 was made of plaster and torn down shortly after the World Fair it was built for. The more permanent one still standing is itself 100 years old now, being built in 1920. So yes, the Parthenon was so nice they built it twice. They were an industrious bunch.
- Speaking of engineering feats: North America’s largest non-casino hotel & resort is in Nashville, ready to give you that indoor river cruise experience you could otherwise get only in Vegas.
- Six bullet points in, and only now do we get to food? Well, it’s good! Much better food and service dollar-for-dollar than anything you will get inside the D.C. beltway at either end of the pricing spectrum. Hot chicken and banana pudding are favorites, though for full transparency I should add that none of puddings we had came close to the one from Bernard’s in Roanoke, VA.
- Some good murals as well.
- “Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI) is a research organization focusing on therapies for patients which include drugs that are in development. With corporate headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, it conducts community-based clinical trials in oncology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and other therapeutic areas.”
- We would pack our bags and move tomorrow if the summers weren’t as humid as D.C.’s. Also, catastrophic flood from as recently as 10 years ago would make me think twice. But it’s on the list!