Nashville before dark

Day 2

Beginning our first full day in Nashville, our primary mission was to obtain a good country breakfast. We scoured the downtown, turning the West End upside down, but alas nothing caught our eye. We visited all three places Rachel Ray featured on $40 a day and still nothing could live up to the grand-daddy of all roadside haunts as the indescribable Loveless Cafe. We gave up our aimles search and opted to lunch here, even though our plan was to have breakfast there the next morning before heading out to Memphis. I feasted on the famous country ham and H scarfed down some fried chicken (BEST EVER), even though she has life-long fear of eating meat off bones. The waitress kept us supplied with homemade scratch buttermilk hot biscuits that we slathered with blackberry preserves and Apple Butter. This place is good, too good. Better than you can do at home and worth any drive within reach. (By the end of our trip, we would eat here three times--and would eat here every day if we could!) On our way back to town we stopped at the Belle Meade Plantation for a interesting tour before we had to get back to the hotel to make our show at the Grand Ole Opry. Our seats were great, right side of stage in the third row. They keep the show going in segments of thirty minutes with three artists playing two songs each. Although we missed Alison Krauss & Union Station by one week we were serenaded by eighteen different acts. Some of our favorites were Riders in the Sky, Hal Ketchum, The Whites, Sherrie Austin, and Pam Tillis. After the show we walked over to the adjacent Gaylord Opryland resort to check out the indoor gardens and atriums that make the place famous. Found our way into Jack Daniels Saloon on the premises and enjoyed myself a nice old fashioned.