NASHVILLE

The Nativity outside the Opryland Hotel

The big Christmas tree at the Opryland Hotel

Santa and I

Outside the restaurant by the sign

Psalmody and I at the Hard Rock gift store




The weekend after Thanksgiving, Lisa, Psalmody, and I went to Nashville. I really wanted to see what there was to see there. The first thing we did there was to go to the African store. It was so neat, with all kinds of African food and other things. I bought myself Shea Butter, and some lotion. Its supposed to be really good for your skin. Interesting stuff! Next Psalmody wanted food, so we stopped at Taco Bell for her. We proceeded to downtown Nashville. I somehow thought I would find amazing downtown shops, and Christmas music playing, and it would be all Christmasy. I was kinda wrong. First off, we had trouble finding a good place to park, the first parking garage was scary, so we went to another one, and parked close to the entrance. We came across the Hard Rock Cafe, and gift store. That was interesting, I wanted to go in it, so I could say I had been there, and I wanted to see what it was all about. It was pretty cool, and I kinda wanted to eat there, but we waited. We walked along the Music venue road, and went into a Western store that sold really expensive cowboy boots and clothes. Most of them seemed quite high end. We went into the Charlie Daniels museum and looked around. We also looked around what used to be Fort Nashborough. It was an interesting downtown, but it had a lot of music and bar places, and it wasn't the nice shops place that I was somehow expecting! After that, we went to the Opryland mall. I had chinese food there, and we looked around for quite a while.It is a very big mall. I bought some gifts for Mary for Christmas and for to send to her for her Christmas banquet. I had so much fun. We went to Outdoor World, and we took pictures with Santa, That was my first time to ever get a picture with Santa. I love Outdoor World. They had lots of cool stuff, and an acquarium with a very big fish in it. After the mall, it was dark outside, and Mrs. Campbell had told us about the Opryland Hotel that was all lighted up and decorated for Christmas. So we set out to find it. We walked and found out that yes, we did indeed have the right place. It is the Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. It is the most amazing place! It has the very large atrium in the middle that is also like a plant conservatory. There were lights everywhere. We walked around a lot of the place, and even went into at least one of the ballrooms or Convention rooms, noone was in there, and we were thirsty, and there was a little place there to get water, so we availed ourselves of some, it was so much fun! Then we went out front, and the lights were magnificent. Trees were lit up, around the circular driveway, there was a beautiful manger scene, and just lights everywhere, like a winter wonderland. A lot of people were there looking at it all too. We stayed there a long time, and then went to see if we could peek into the Grand Ole Opry. We were too late though, and it were told it was locked, but at least we got to see the outside. Then we decided to go home. We had parked kinda across in the mall parking lot, but we couldn't seem to find our car, so we walked all around, and finally found. it, and we were so happy. It was a very beautiful and exciting day!