A Day in Nashville

I mentioned earlier last week that DJ would have this Sunday off and we planned on making the very most of it. Boy, did we. We woke up at 6 am Sunday morning and didn't get home till the wee hours of Monday morning. 2:09 a.m. to be exact. It was exhausting but so. much. fun. It's amazing what you can pack into one day when you really want to.

We started out the day by dropping Maia off at the vet to be boarded. This allowed us to enjoy the day that much more because we didn't have to worry about how long we were going to gone or taking her out when we got home super late. And let me tell you it was a nice break from that little rascal. She has developed a new "thing".

She picks up her bowl of water - her full bowl of water, mind you - and tries to carry it over to me. And obviously because she does not realize (or care) that her bowl is full, proceeds to dump it all over the floor. This is especially not nice because we had a scare with a broken bowl this past Saturday when a bowl was chipped and she ate a piece (we think) and had to be taken to the vet for an x-ray. Not nice.

She's claims she's sorry. Ha. Heard that one before.

But I digress, back to our Sunday adventures. We went to Mass after dropping Maia off and then we were off to Nashville. DJ found out that his buddy Hank Baskett that used to play for the Lobos and now plays for the Indianapolis Colts was going to be in Nashville since the Colts were playing the Tennessee Titans. DJ called him to see if we would be able to get some tickets for the game and sure enough, Hank was able to hook us up. So our decision was made for us and we headed off to Nashville for the day.

We got into the city a little before 11 a.m. and headed straight to the hotel to say "Hey Hank!" and get the tickets. I was excited to meet Hank since I hadn't met him before and well, he's sort of a celebrity. I mean, there's the football thing and then the fact that he married a Playboy bunny this past year and has been in the tabloids recently so, I hate to say it, but I was a little fascinated. It turns out he's very non-celebrity-ish which is a good thing and very friendly. I was surprised at how nice he was. I mean, I didn't expect him not to be but he was like, verry friendly. He hugged DJ for like 5 minutes (not really, but it wasn't just one of those half-hug, side shoulder kind of things. It was a "hey buddy! Great to see you ol' pal!" kind of hug and I thought that was nice.) and then after he hugged DJ again to tell him good bye, he hugged me and said how great it was to meet me. So yeah, very friendly and I can say it was very unexpected. (Oh, and as for the lacking picture, I had fully intended to take one and had a whole scenario planned out on how I was going to work it and then when he was so nice, I just couldn't be the obnoxious person who asks for a picture. It just felt so wrong. So, no picture of Hank but here are the tickets.)

After that, we started driving towards downtown not really having a plan and passed by Opry Land. Well of course, we had to stop there. I mean Nashville = Grand Ol' Opry.

That place was a lot cooler than I expected it to be. (I guess you could say this little day trip was turning out to be a trip of exceeding expectations.) I found out that Keith Urban will be at the Grand Ol' Opry at the end of the month. Any takers?? I reeeally want to go. DJ and I both agreed that if somehow, we had missed the fact that Carrie Underwood was, in fact, performing that night, we would have passed on the game, and went to her concert instead. We're big fans.

The grounds were beautiful outside the building. All decorated for fall.

Ahhh, fall. I love this time of year.

We continued walking and headed into Opry Mills, a shopping mall. They had all sorts of stuff to do there other than shopping but we mostly just window-shopped. Other than when we didn't. We just couldn't resist some of the stores so DJ ended up with a brand-spanking new suit. I'm going to have to plan things that require him to wear a suit now because it's one good-looking suit! Hopefully he'll get to wear it in a couple of weeks for the next away game, and I'll be able to show you pictures.

We also found this great country store called Apple Barn which I loved.

They had apples. And apple butter. And apple cider. And apple fritters. And other things not associated with apples. But I was most excited about the apple butter. Did you know, there is also such a thing as pumpkin butter, cherry butter and peach butter? I didn't, and next time I have to try some of that. For now, I stuck with good ol' traditional apple butter. Mmm. I could have spent a lot more time in that store but DJ's eyes were glazing over and not because of the caramel glazing the Red Delicious Apples.

After we made it through the mall, we were starving and were determined to seek out some traditional Tennessee BBQ. We found this.

Here.

Jack's Bar-B-Que. I know I've had me some good B-B-Q when I have found the place where pigs fly. It was amazing.

We drove around downtown a little bit, and I attempted to capture every gorgeous building with my camera. These are a few.

Pardon the obnoxious street lights and construction cones. We were taking our tour "drive-by style" and I had only seconds to capture each image. Not too bad if I may say so myself.

We ended up parking and heading to the stadium early because we thought they may have some fun tailgating activities going on. They didn't. But I do feel like I got the very most out of my free tickets. We saw all there was to see outside the stadium, including a modeling shoot.

We thought maybe it was America's Next Top Model (I've gotten DJ into that show lately) but with no tv cameras around, we decided they were just regular ol' models.

And then there was this great concert going on across the river with all sorts of big name country artists. Thank goodness, none of my most favorite artists were there otherwise I would have died since I only had a backwards view and really couldn't enjoy it that well. That would have ruined DJ's day. If I would have died. But instead we enjoyed, as much as we could, Darius Rucker, Billy Currington and Eric Church who were all warbling their tid bits across the river. And by we, I mean me. DJ hates country music. A crying shame. That's some good stuff. It was nice to have something to listen to while we waited for the gates to open. Even if it did sound like they were singing into the Grand Canyon.

When it was finally time to head into the stadium, we went in search of our seats. Little did we know that we would get to sit with the birds. Actually we watched the birds from above. We were that high. Here's a little glimpse. (Ha, the way the video freezes, DJ doesn't look too good.)

Yes, it was amusing that we were literally 6 rows from the very tip-top of the stadium. I actually, for the first time in my life, was a little scared of heights. I felt like any sudden movements, would send me catapulting across the seats in front of me. I moved very. carefully.

It was actually kind of surreal because it was hard to feel a part of the game being that far removed. We literally watched birds fly lower than us all night. Plus the surreal feeling was magnified by the fact that we were sitting amidst the minority in the stadium - Colts fans. Hank's seats were obviously with the other Colts fans and actually it was with some of the other Colts family members. We met the second string QB's parents and grandparents (who were very friendly - we talked with them for quite a bit since they got there really early too) and saw the punter's parents and a couple of the star players' parents (Saturday and Freeney). It was a different experience overall but it wasn't bad. And we were very grateful for the tickets for sure. It was our first time in a very long time to get to watch a game together since he's always on the field.

A few memorable highlights of the game for me:

It was the Sunday Night game on NBC. It didn't really do much for the game other than cause a lot of commercial break time-outs (and there were some fireworks but they were directly behind us and not quite high enough so we couldn't see them. We were higher than the fireworks.) but just the fact that I knew we were at the game that I normally see on tv was a highlight.

Trace Adkins sang the national anthem. From our birds eye view, we were able to see him arrive to the stadium with his police escort. And that's him on the screen because if I tried taking a picture of the "real" him, he'd look even less like a person. More like an ant.

We got to see Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, play a great game. We also got to see Adam Vinateiri (sp?), a native Rapid Citian and Central High School graduate, play.

Again, from our birds eye view, we were able to see the bridge lit up in blue for the game.

And lastly, I can now say that, although the actual game itself was better because the skill displayed on the field is the best of the best, the game experience as a whole pales in comparison to college football. I am now a true college football fan.