The first stop of the day was lunch at the San Antonio Taco Co, where Charlie had eaten while on a road trip with friends. Located right next to the Vanderbilt campus, this tex mex place is your typical quick and cheap college eatery. My favorite item of the meal was the pulled pork fajita with cheese, onions and peppers. I also tried the soft shell ground beef taco, steak fajita, and chicken fajita. Charlie ordered one of each of those, swapping out the steak with a fish taco. We split some chips & queso and with water to drink it was only $21! First meal down and I was pumped.
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| L to R: pork, steak, chicken |
We ventured across campus to Centennial Park to walk off some of our full bellies. The parts of Vanderbilt's campus that we saw were very pretty, even with all the strung out looking students. You could tell that Finals week panic was in full swing. The final destination was the Parthenon, located in the park. I'm not sure how I learned about Nashville's Parthenon, but I knew if I ever got the chance I would have to go. It was built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition and housed the art exhibition. People loved the building so much that the city decided to leave it. In 1920, with the building starting to crumble, reconstruction work began with permanent materials. The city then decided to have it built into a complete full scale replica, both inside and out, of the original Greek Parthenon.
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| Front Entrance |
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| Me standing at the back |
Today the Parthenon still houses artwork, and for only $6 you can visit during day time hours. I thought the outside was incredible when we saw it, but it was nothing compared to the 41 feet 10 inches statue of Athena inside. In her hand she holds Nike, the goddess of victory who sits at 6 feet 4 inches tall which is the exact height of my husband, Charlie. The statue was sculpted out of cement reinforced with fiberglass on a steel frame, but was gilded and painted with 8 pounds of real 23.75 carat gold! I could go on and on because there is so much more to see inside and the park itself has a lot of history to read about. It's definitely a must see, especially if you're into the historical stuff. It was mind blowing to think that human beings built the exact same thing almost 2500 years ago without 20th century technology.
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| detail at the base of Athena |
We took a different route back to the car, stopping at Barnes & Noble, where I bought a copy of THIS book, The Hot Chicken Cookbook. I wanted to study up since I knew we would be eating hot chicken the next day. Once back to our car, we headed to check into our Airbnb in the 12 South neighborhood. This was our very first time using Airbnb and honestly I was a little nervous since we were basically in staying in an annex of someone's house. Long story short, it turned out to be perfect. It was super clean (as in immaculate); the sheets and towels smelled so fresh and I never felt like we lacked privacy.
The best part about the place we stayed was it's location; literally less than a five minute walk to the main street of the neighborhood (12th Avenue) so that's where we headed after dropping off our bags. We chose Edley's Bar-B-Que for supper; we both got the pulled pork sandwich plate with mac & cheese. I got collard greens as my second side while Charlie chose baked beans. We agreed that the pork was fairly good, tender and smoky with some of those "bark" pieces that I love so much. The sauce was tangy with a little heat so it definitely isn't for those who enjoy a sweeter style. I felt that the mac & cheese could have been cheesier and was a little on the bland side, but I've definitely had worse. The collards were awesome; seasoned well with a little kick to them and I loved their texture. Southerners usually cooks greens in a big pot until they practically turn to mush (which I love), but these still had a good bite to them. They weren't crunchy in anyway, but I actually had to chew them up pretty good, easily my favorite part of the meal. I can't remember the exact price here, but the entire meal with one water & one drink was less than $25 so I'd definitely recommend it for a relaxed atmosphere, short wait, and tasty, inexpensive food.
After eating we ventured to the downtown area just to take a look around. The Titans had played earlier in the day and Nissan Stadium was still lit up across the river. It was incredibly cold and windy, with a little rain falling here and there, but we made the trek across the pedestrian bridge. [The bridge is free and parking at Nissan Stadium is free as long as there is no game or event.] The view was beautiful, with the entire city lit up in the mistiness and because most sane people were probably in their warm homes, we pretty much had the whole bridge to ourselves. We took our pictures, shared a kiss or two, and poked fun at how cold we were. It was the perfect ending to our first day in Nashville. We hit up a grocery store on the way home for a few essentials and went straight to bed so we'd be rested up for day 2!
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| Pedestrian Bridge |
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| Does anyone else think the AT&T building looks like Sauron's tower from LOTR? |
Monday, December 12, we woke up, put on our walking shoes and took a stroll around the neighborhood. Since we had been out the night before we knew of some places we'd like to stop in. White's Mercantile is an adorable little shop where I could get into some serious trouble: books, home decor, pet products, soaps & lotions, knick-knacks galore. Charlie was probably bored out of his skull, but he was a good sport. We stopped in at the Frothy Monkey for a caffeine fill up. I tried the "masala pumpkin" off of their seasonal menu; made with espresso, steamed milk, house made pumpkin sauce featuring cinnamon, nutmeg, and a hint of curry. I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I really enjoyed it. It caught me off guard because it was so different, very "spiced pumpkin" but not overly sweet or fake. And of course we had to get our tourist on at the I Believe in Nashville sign.
Next we headed over to the famous Five Daughters Bakery (which ended up being my single favorite bite of the entire trip). This bakery was started by a couple with 5 daughters, hence the name, and has 2 other locations besides the one we visited in 12 south. While they have many other delicious options, including vegan and paleo pastries, we went straight for the 100 layer donut, their version of the "cronut". We each picked our own, mine was the cranberry(seasonal), Charlie chose vanilla creme, and we picked the King Kong (maple bacon) to split. These donuts are a little pricey at $4.50 a piece, but let me tell you it was worth it. That maple bacon was to die for, the others were phenomenal as well, but holy cow...so many light, flaky layers of pastry with cream in the middle topped with maple glaze and thick peppery bacon. It was one of those moments where your eyes roll back in your head and you don't want to chew or swallow because you hope the taste never leaves your mouth. Yeah....I think I'm still in love with a donut. We even stopped by on our way out of town to get 2 more for when we got home!
While in Nashville, I knew we had to try "Nashville hot chicken". You can't travel somewhere and not try their most famous dish. Hot chicken is said to have started when Thorton Prince III came home late to his girlfriend and she was sick of his games and fooling around so she decided to get her revenge. And in her mind, revenge was a dish best served spicy hot. For breakfast she made his favorite fried chicken, but smothered it in a paste made with cayenne pepper, hoping to burn the living daylights out of him. Instead of her intended misery, he actually loved it and so began hot chicken. We headed to Prince's Hot Chicken Shack for our lunch.
Upon arrival I noticed a sign that said something to the affect of "Please ask cashier about heat levels. No refunds will be given". So I did. It was recommended that I go lower than I thought I should because most people don't realize the severity of the heat. Starting at plain it went to mild, medium and on up to XXX Hot and since I can usually handle some heat I chose 2 medium tenders and 2 hot. Charlie, who is the hot food connoisseur (I'm talking isn't bothered at all by the hottest sauce on every wing menu), ordered his X Hot. When he said that the cashier made a face and said "whoooo...ok". At this point I was nervous. Our sides were fries and potato salad. My first bite of medium was delicious, crunchy well fried chicken tenders in a flavorful hot sauce. It took about 4 to 5 seconds for the back of my throat to start burning, but I was doing ok. Then I made the mistake of going for the hot. It was a burn like I had never felt before. From the deep down pit of my stomach all the way up though my chest and throat it blazed fire. My eyes watered, my nose ran and the edges of my lips were already painfully numb. Poor Charlie, who I'm pretty sure had never been bested by spiciness before, was struggling. I looked around the restaurants and every person in there was wiping their eyes and noses. Thank goodness for the huge roll of paper towels on every table.
I didn't touch my hot tenders again, but I did manage to finish the medium although about halfway through the meal I knew I was going to need some medicine. We hit up a Walgreens for some pepto as soon as we left. The potato salad was delicious and thankfully helped cool things off a bit. The big mistake we made was not sitting closer to the drink machine! The total bill was around $25 so thankfully we didn't pay too much to incinerate our insides. Overall Im glad we tried hot chicken and I would definitely do it again, just maybe take it down to mild. It's a worthwhile experience if you like heat, but don't be fooled. Nashville hot chicken is not for the faint of heart.
After lunch Charlie proposed we go back to our Airbnb to relax for a little while and since my digestive system was a cayenne pepper volcano I was on board. I read in the hot chicken book I purchased that people say "it's hotter going out than it is coming in". Let's put it this way...I was grateful to be near a bathroom I was somewhat comfortable with. After a few hours of much needed rest, we headed west out of the main city of Nashville to Mckay's Used Bookstore. This place is a bibliophile's dream. It was the size of a huge warehouse, a two story supermarket for books, movies, video games. We each went our separate ways and browsed for well over an hour through every genre you can imagine. When Charlie found me my arms were so full that he had to go get a small buggy to help carry it all. Everything was so insanely cheap that I couldn't help myself. A month later and I'm still working my way through the stack, resolved not to buy any new books until I've read them all.
It had reached dinner time at this point, but neither of us was ready to even think about food so we headed back to our place to snuggle on the couch and catch up on Top Chef. Later in the evening we drove to Nama Sushi Bar for a late supper. I lost count of how many rolls we had, but since we are both hardcore sushi lovers I know we had a ton. The restaurant was still packed even at 10pm which is a good sign when you're eating raw fish! It was a wonderful night. As Charlie put it "NAMA stay here and eat more sushi". We laughed about all the hot chicken drama from earlier in the day and talked about how much we missed our animals (It was also our dog Indie's birthday so I was a little sad). We reminisced about what we were doing at exactly that time 2 years ago on the night before our wedding. That evening is a memory that will stick out in my mind for a long time as something special even though it was as simple as sitting in a crowded restaurant waiting on our next sushi roll to arrive.
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| Half price night! |
We ended the day by walking around the Parthenon again, which is usually lit up with white lights at night but due to it being the holidays the lights were red and green. We strolled through a little section of the park with Christmas lights and trekked up the hill to look down at the city. My stomach and my heart was full. I couldn't believe our trip was only halfway done, it seemed like we had done so much already! I'll share the remaining 2 days from our trip on my next post!
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| Looking at the moon between the columns. Incredible to think that people looked up at the same moon from the original Parthenon! |
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