We are back to house sitting and arrived at our Nashville house sit on Thursday, January 11. We left Thom's mom's house on Tuesday and stopped in Independence, Kentucky first. We spent a day and half at our niece's house. Our niece had Covid at Christmas, so we did not get to see her until her family was healthy.
It was a 4 hour drive to Nashville from Independence. The weather was sunny in Independence and we took a long walk before leaving after lunch. It was in the mid 50s, when we arrived in Nashville and it was still sunny. We forgot to account for the time change from Eastern to Central time zone and arrived in Nashville early. We took another walk and then had dinner a small, local vegan soul food restaurant, Vegelicious and it was good.
Our house sit is about 3 miles from downtown Nashville in the Sylvan Park neighborhood which is southwest of Nashville. It is a very nice three bedroom house and there are two very easy dogs. We decided on Nashville, because we have never been here before and it is a little further south, so it should be warmer than Wisconsin.
The dogs are well-behaved and easy. Canilla is a 15 year old miniature pincher and she is so tiny. She mostly just sleeps. She gets up to walk to her water bowl and she eats once a day. She also has a pee-pee pad in the downstairs bathroom. When it is too cold or we are gone, she will use the pad. Lulu is a younger dog, but she is really fairly calm and we can leave her for extended periods of time and she is fine.
Our first night was extremely windy, but the next day was in the 50s and we took Lulu for a walk to see what was around us. We are located within walking distance to an organic food store (think Willy Street), cafes, restaurants, and thrift stores. We are in a nice neighborhood that seems to be in a renewal phase, as many smaller houses are being torn down and rebuilt.
Saturday afternoon was sunny and in the high 40s. We walked from our house sit to downtown Nashville. We walked by a public art project called "Off the Wall -- Charlotte Avenue". Charlotte Avenue is close to our house and has a lot of the restaurants and stores that we can walk to. On our way downtown, we walked through Centennial Park, which is two miles from our house. Centennial Park was the site of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition celebrating Nashville first 100 years in 1897. The highlight of the park is the full-scale replica of the Parthenon which is the only building that remains from the expo. This area of land became a city park in 1903. The Parthenon seemed slightly out of place in this park in Nashville, however; Nashville was once known as the Athens of the west or south, because of the emphasis the city placed on education.
From the park, we continued to walk past Vanderbilt University to downtown on Church Street which is a main thoroughfare through downtown Nashville. As we walked from the park to downtown Nashville, we saw a few people walking around, but it was pretty quiet on Church Street. We decided to walk to Broadway where the Honky Tonks are located. It was packed with people with country music pouring from the bars and restaurants. On Broadway, the bars and restaurants have retained their original facades unlike the new modern buildings on Church Street. We continued our walk through the crowds down Broadway to the Cumberland River. From there, we could see the Tennessee Titan stadium across the river and a walking trail along the river.
We decided to walk back on a different street than Broadway as it was so packed with people and it was noisy and crazy with bachelor and bachelorette parties, bicycle bars and crazy bus tours. This was a great choices as we ended up walking by the Schermerhorn Symphony Orchestra Hall, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and Music City Center. The orchestra hall was very beautiful and slightly out of place after the bars and honky tonks. The neo-classical orchestra hall building was opened in 2006, although the orchestra itself was established in 1945.
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum was built in 2001 after being relocated from a previous location. I liked the piano key windows on the front of the building which caught my attention from afar. The windows are laid out like the black keys of a piano keyboard.
The Music City Convention Center roofline is in the shape of a guitar and fills more than a city block. It is a massive 2.1 million square feet structure which opened in 2013.
We were starting to get cold and decided to head back to our house. It was in the mid 40s, but in the shade of the buildings it feels cooler. Once we were walking again, we warmed up and made our way back to our house. We both had about 10 miles of walking on our apps. Not bad, for a first walking tour of Nashville.
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