Weekend in Nashvegas: Part 1

SO bored sitting in this stand still traffic!
Finally in the room! We heard about the King of Pop as we sat in traffic - I couldn't believe it. I was glued to the TV with all of the updates!



Caribbean Pancakes: heard these are Keith Urban's favorite! They were SOO good and served with homemade Maple syrup!!


Busy downtown Nashville






So we are back after our long weekend, getaway trip to Nashville which began Thursday. I wish I could start by saying that everything was wonderful from start to finish, but I would be lying! ha ha. Everything WAS great until we found ourselves in the WORST traffic jam on the way and a trip that would normally take us only 3 hours took us 7 hours!!! Ugghhh! It was horrible! Apparently some psycho idiot shot a policeman on Interstate 40, which caused traffic to be SOOO backed up. The police were having to conduct their investigation on the interstate and traffic was backed up for hours. I called my Dad because he is pretty familiar with the area from traveling there so much in the past for his job, and so he told me how we could get off on a back road and miss the traffic. Mike had is iPhone which we used some with the GPS. So we took a back road and got going and thought okay, this is good, we should get there in no time. WRONG! Traffic was all backed up on these little 2 lane roads too!! AHHHHH! So it was not any quicker. I guess everyone had the same idea we had. It was quite frustrating to say the least but there was nothing we could do. I was trying to make the most of it and joke around with Mike, but he was not in a good mood. And I kept trying to keep things lightened up  - but after a while when you are the only one doing it - it gets old. So I ended up not being in the best of moods either. We were supposed to get in town at 3 and go look around and maybe shop a little then go back to the hotel and get cleaned up and go to dinner. By the time we actually got there, got checked in, and in our room it was around 7:45. We were pretty tired! I told Mike I had to have a drink, beer or something. So we ran up to a gas station and I got some BL Lime's! Just what I needed. We chilled in the room for a while and then decided to change and go to dinner. Mike was starving at this point and when he is hungry and already not in the best of moods it is not good. We can never decide on a restaurant. We always go back and forth "What do you want? I don't know . . . what do you want???" So finally we decide to head to downtown Franklin (we stayed in Franklin outside of Nashville this time.) We saw some cool, quaint looking restaurants on our way in that day on the square so we were headed there. It was almost 10:00 at this point and I had forgotten that it was Thursday. It felt like Friday to us. So every where was closing. Mike was not happy because he was SO hungry - I was too, and after being in the car for 7 hours when it should have been only 3, we were in no mood to have to be driving all over town to find somewhere to eat. So we go to Chili's - which normally I always like, but when I go out of town, I don't want to go to a chain restaurant - I want to try local places that we do not have at home. To make matters and the night even worse - the service at Chili's was horrible. It took forever for someone to get our drink orders, forever for our appetizer and 35 minuets to get our food. I finally told Mike that we needed to ask for to go boxes. I think he wanted to stay there and eat it but I knew they were closing and I didn't want to have to sit there and rush eating my only meal that day. So we got it to go and the manager came over and apologized and said the meal was on him - so that was the only good part of it. So we took it back to our room, ate and then went to bed. We were in horrible moods and taking it out on each other. I was so upset because this was not how I had hoped our weekend away would start. 

The next morning things were better after we got some sleep! We got up, had coffee in our room then headed to downtown Nashville to eat at the Pancake Pantry. It is a Nashville tradition and the locals, visitors and even stars enjoy eating here. After that we walked around downtown, went in some cool shops. Mike bought me this really cool gold ring in this store called Posh - were many female singers shop including Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood! We went to Urban Outfitters and then after walking around all afternoon, went to Cantina Laredo to cool off with a Blue Moon and some chips and salsa!  Once we got back to the room we were pretty tired from the day. We ended up going to a local Whole Foods and picked up a couple things for dinner and just relaxed in the room while we decided what we were going to do later on that night - which is where "Part 2" will come in. So stay tuned . . . .