Nashville, TN & A Wedding

Matt's best childhood friend Jeremy got married in Bowling Green, Kentucky last Friday. We flew in to town to celebrate their big day. Hooray.

Really, we flew into Nashville. Because Bowling Green is lil. We got in late Thursday and stayed in the Nashville area. Friday we slept in a bit and then headed into 'downtown' Nashville. It was hot. Hot, hot, hot, and humid. Iced coffee from Starbucks took a lil bit of the sting out of it. We wandered around by the river for a while, walked across a neat pedestrian bridge and just kinda got the feel for town.

River boat

Spent an hour by the pool after that while I listened in on a conference call I had for work...don't worry Brian, I listened very hard! Then it was time to get ready for the wedding and head up to the great land of Kentucky.

The wedding ceremony was a beautiful small ceremony. The reception wasn't for a couple of hours after that so we went out to dinner with some people Matt knew from back home, and another couple from Oregon we didn't know. The reception after that was a great time. Amy (the bride) was beautiful and it was fun to celebrate them! It was a good night of visiting with people from hometown Oregon, and then we had a long drive back to Nashville.

Bride & Groom making their entrance!

Matt + his buddy Jeremy

We had booked tickets the night before to go to the Grand Ole Opry with our new friends Wayne and Carrie that evening so we decided to head out of town for the day. Destination: Lynchburg, TN, home of Jack Daniels distillery. The tour was free, fun, and informative. Unfortunately it's a dry county so there was no taste testing involved. :( The drive was nice too and it was good to get out and see the countryside a bit since neither of us had been to that part of the country before.

Welcome

There was like, a Corvette convention going on there

This one was my favorite

Hi.

Matt & Jack himself

This is where they make the coal that they let the whiskey drip through to 'mellow' it

This is their special spring which is the reason they are located where they are

Umm..the guy didn't take very good pictures. But thanks anyways.

Matt found a butterfly friend

You're not supposed to take pictures inside, but I'm a bad person and did it anyway

This is the plaque showing the our dear president bought an entire barrel of Jack Daniels.

After an hour by the pool and a bit of freshening up we headed in to Nashville again. The 'Opry House's was flooded during the terrible flood Nashville had back in May. So the show was held at the Ryman Auditorium, which is actually the original home of the Opry. The show included Patty Loveless, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, and a few others. I didn't recognize any of the names but did know their songs once I heard them. Mostly older country stars. I won't say it's the best concert I've ever been to or anything but it was a fun experience.

Ryman Auditorium

Us :)

A really bad picture of Matt & our new buddies Wayne and Carrie

The Show

After the show the four of us grabbed a late dinner and then headed out to explore some of the nightlife. What Nashville lacks in liveliness during the day, it certainly makes up for at night. The place was hopping!

We got back to our hotel at one an had to set the alarm for 3:40 to make our 6am flight. We were still on Seattle time, which translates to waking up at 1:40 and we considered just staying up all night. We thought better of it, caught a few hours of shut eye, and made the long journey back home to the land of the North.




Some Interesting Cultural Observations

1. Sweet tea is really good
2. Fried pickles on the other hand are NOT good.
3. White Castle & Krystals also get a big thumbs down from us.
4. Their accents are not nearly as strong as those of my Texan kin.
5. Its GREEN. I must say, I expected brown. I mean, it's nothing to our ocean an mountains up here, but it's not ugly.
6. No one uses a turn signal.
7. Note to Washington: We are tired of state run liquor stores. The rest of the country has it right.




(Mr. Barber thinks I'm funny for calling sweet tea 'cultural', but it IS!)