welcome to the future: part I

Happy New Year dear readers!  It certainly doesn't feel like a brand new year at the moment - but it's still taken a few days to get used to seeing 2012 written everywhere.  After coming back to my little apartment post-Christmas it was time to go adventuring with Snaps!  So excited to have a non-family visitor come to play out here in KY.

Opry House

Together, Snaps and I hit 3 states in 3 days- Tennessee, Kentucky & Illinois - and did a little time travel as we celebrated the start of 2012!  We started out in Nashville on Thursday and went to see the Grand Old Opry House at night.  They don't give tours in December (just our luck) but we still managed to get a few pictures and that was good enough.  We also went and watched 'We Bought a Zoo' while out at the Opryland area.  Based on a true story about buying & running a zoo & it stars Matt Damon- it was a fantastic movie!  I got the book for Christmas and now I can't wait to start reading.

me @ the Parthenon

  Friday we headed into downtown which was full of people!  That night the Music City Bowl (college football) was going on so there were lots of Mississippi & Wake Forest fans everywhere.  Beautiful day with some scattered sunshine, a large dose of wind and warmish temperatures in the mid 50s.  We learned all about Nashville on the trolley tour and hopped on & off at several places to explore.  First up was the Parthenon replica from the Tennessee Centennial Expo back in 1897.  We hopped off the trolley, wandered the art gallery in the lower level and stared in awe at the 42 foot tall statue of Athena, visited the gift shop and on the way out saw the trolley just puling away from the curb.  Oops.  So we spent some more time taking photos while waiting for the trolley to come back again so we could continue our tour.

RCA studio B

We drove through Music Row and around Bicentennial Park where we stopped for photos with the capitol in the background.  Then it was onto the Country Music Hall of Fame.  As a museum professional, it's always fun to go to other museums and, in addition to the artifacts & exhibit, take in how they mounted labels, or objects, lighting, signage, etc.  I am not a country music fan per se (even living here in KY), but was still interested in some of the history of the genre and the way it developed.  There were some great [note: interesting...] outfits worn by stars through the years along with some fancy objects - Elvis' gold piano, a car with guns for door handles and more.  It was the first time I've been to any Hall of Fame.


Studio B [ignore the road signs] is where Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton & many more recorded.  It closed after Elvis died and has since been reopened as a museum in conjunction with the Hall of Fame.  Of course, the best part was running around town with Snaps!