Nashville, TN 4/10-4/12

Alright so I am not up to date like I had hoped to be.  Traveling has been so much fun that its been hard to take my eyes off the country side and look at my phone to type down what we have been up to.  We left Florida and realized that we were on our way back home.  We made a small stop on our way to Nashville and visited Birmingham to explore the Civil Rights museum.  After that we continued our way up to Nashville. 

NASHVILLE - We got into Nashville on Wednesday night and tried to get into the Bluebird café, but it was full for the night :( if you don't know what the bluebird café is, the ABC Show Nashville has featured it many of times and is a base for the show.  I was a little upset but I got over it and took pictures and went on our way to downtown.  Chris out of nowhere said "we are spoiling ourselves, give me directions to the Gaylord Hotel" (its the hotel that's right by the Opry House).  Mark, Chris's brother told us to visit it because its an amazing hotel and we needed to check it out.  He was right, it was amazing.  When we pulled into the main check-in area we had 4 valet guys rushing up to see if we need to valet the bus and if they could drive it.  It was the funniest sight ever.  After the 10 minutes of talking to the valet guys we finally went inside to see if they had rooms available.  We were able to get a room with a view of the atrium, unpacked and then went exploring the hotel.  We went to the Jack Daniel's restaurant and had dinner and listened to the live music for the rest of the night.  The next morning we got our bearing straight and caught a bus into downtown for the day/night.  It was raining the whole day but we made the best out of it and put on ponchos and explored.  We did the typical Nashville night and went Honky Tonkin.  Basically we went into random bars, ordered beers and listened to the performers until we were ready to go to the next bar.  We went to 7 bars that night :)  it was a fun night enjoying the Nashville atmosphere.  The best part about that night was we didn't have to drive home.  Friday we drove into Nashville with bus and visited the history channels show "American Pickers" store Antique Archeology.  We wanted to see what Mike would give us for the bus ( just kidding Terry).  After that we did some more roaming around downtown before we headed back up to the hotel to our night at the Grand ole Opry.  It was such a fun experience to be at the Opry.  Their were 12 performers, Riders in the Sky, The Isaacs,  Lonestar and Chuck Wicks just to name a few.  During the show, a promotion was announced for Cracker Barrel about winning tickets/flight to California to a Brad Paisley show (online entry).  They ALSO gave away 2 free dinner tickets to Cracker Barrel to an audience member sitting in section 12, row s, set 4. I look over at Chris and I see him with his hands folded and praying "please let me win, please let me win".  Needless to say he WON.  After the show I stood in line to get Chuck Wicks autograph while Chris went to claim his prize.  What a fun way to end our time in Nashville. Defiantly a place we want to come back to and do more exploring.