Nashville, TN: Day 2

Today was spent driving to other parts of Nashville, and attending a performance at the Grand Ole Opry in the evening.

There were so many places to explore but I decided to take it easy after walking around downtown yesterday. I left the KOA late in the morning to visit the State Museum of Tennessee. It was located across from the State Capitol, had well designed and thoughtful exhibits, a good place to spend an hour away from the heat.

The Farmer's Market was close by: I made a stop to check it out. Found there was not much going on, I suppose it would be busier on weekends.

Then, it was on to the Opry Mills to find free parking close to the Grand Ole Opry. It was a typical mall, I found a Mexican chain restaurant and ordered an early relaxing dinner until it was time to go to the Opry Hall.

As previously mentioned, I'm not a country music fan but wanted to experience sitting in the Grand Ole Opry. I got the ticket months ago, had no idea who the performers were because that was not announced then. I found out that Carrie Underwood was scheduled to perform a week after I was there. That would have been a nice and unexpected performance!

After getting into my seat a group of four came and sat in the seats just in front of me. They were speaking in Italian; I asked them if they were from Italy. It turned out they were on a tour of American music cities -- they had already visited New Orleans for zydeco and jazz, Memphis for blues and now Nashville for country. We chatted a bit: I told them about seeing Enrico Morricone in an unforgetable outdoor concert in Lucca. The performance started a bit late, I did not know any of the performers but they were pretty good. The acoustics in the auditorium was great. After the performance ended, it was an easy drive back to the KOA campground for my last night there before I head out to Michigan.