Explore Nashville, the Southern Boomtown
With its honky-tonk bars, historic landmarks, sports franchises, parkland, gardens, and cultural festivals, Nashville is a southern boomtown. The home of country music, with its major music recording center concentrated on Music Row, the city is a melting pot of creativity. You’re faced with almost too many choices to fit into your agenda here, including some of the best Southern cooking you will ever taste.
Though I was expecting all of the above to be a shade clichéd, a bubble of overblown Americana, I was pleasantly surprised — by the casual aura, the efficient tourism infrastructure, and the so-pleasant people. The best time to visit Nashville is spring and fall, during months that promise moderate temperatures and ample sunshine, but the city is a stellar year-round destination.
Face the Music
Music is the cornerstone of your trip to Nashville, the city’s raison d’être. I was initially daunted by the 30+ bars on Lower Broadway – Honky Tonk Highway – which pump out live music from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. with nary a cover charge in sight (take note, though, of the tip jars).
Expand your range to include nearby Printer’s Alley, once home to the city’s printing industry, now a showcase of small clubs that are descendants of the speakeasies of the Prohibition era. If you don’t like the music in one place, simply carry on to the next.
Slip out to the edge of town to the Grand Ole Opry for its weekly live radio show featuring legendary and upcoming country acts. This is a mandatory music pitstop — and you can even book Nashville: Grand Ole Opry Show Tickets in advance to guarantee your seat at one of the city’s most iconic live performances, featuring multiple artists on one night and a mix of stars past and present.
The Opry’s original home should also be on the agenda: The Ryman Auditorium is a national historic landmark, still mounting more than 200 shows a year on its iconic stage.
Across the street, the extremely thorough National Museum of African American Music connects the dots through 50 genres of 20th-century music uniquely and interactively.
The unrivaled collection of historical artifacts in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will have you ogling hundreds of gold records, Minnie Pearl’s hat, Elvis’s limousine, Johnny Cash’s guitar, and Dwight Yoakam’s suits for hours on end. Seriously, set aside several hours for this monumental blast of country-music culture.
Experience the Artistry
Unsurprisingly, Nashville is filled with creative enterprises that immerse visitors in a variety of artisanal activities. We stopped for a coffee and a second breakfast at Nashville Glasshaüs and stayed for a spin through the glass-blowing facility and its adjacent gallery. It’s filled with exquisite, hand-blown glass artworks.
Hatch Show Print is one of America’s oldest working letterpress poster shops, which has been in the advertising business since 1879. A tour here reveals how craftspeople have been hand-printing original art with hand-carved imagery, creating show posters for a diverse mix of entertainers over the years, from Elvis and Patsy Cline to Foo Fighters and Lizzo.
If you’re traveling with a small group, the Nashville Songwriter Experience gets you collaborating with professional studio songwriters, musicians, and producers in one of the city’s top music studios. Participants discover all facets of the hit-making process, learning how to write, rehearse, record, and mix an original song that you all co-write. Correction: y’all co-write.
Have the Hot Chicken
It’s hard to miss the massive Assembly Food Hall within the new Fifth + Broadway complex, which comprises more than 30 artisanal eateries that deftly cover all of the basic Nashville food groups, including the town’s trademark hot chicken, biscuits and gravy, and all.
Head out for wine and pizza at the casual Folk restaurant in the up-and-coming East Nashville neighborhood, named one of Bon Appétit magazine’s 50 Best New Restaurants. Oysters and small plates abound at the spacious Henrietta Red, Germantown’s chic spot for seafood. More tapas-style deliciousness awaits around the corner at Pelato, a feast of Italian specialties like arancini, meatballs, and chicken parmigiana.
The most iconic Nashville culinary experience belongs to Arnold’s Country Kitchen, the city’s landmark “meat and three” comfort-food restaurant (choose one meat dish plus three sides), open only for lunch. Try Southern and soul-food classics like chicken and dumplings, fried catfish, mac and cheese, corn pudding, and turnip greens. Dolly Parton is a fan and you will be, too. In the end, I was very happy to have packed the stretchy pants.
Read More: Cinnamon Bread, Butterflies, and Dolly Parton: A Day at Dollywood
Trip Down to Franklin
We took a half-hour drive south of Nashville to the small city of Franklin, a principal site of American Civil War battles, with many scars to prove it. The Carter House is a case in point, a large family home caught in the middle of the 1864 Battle of Franklin, now serving as a memorial to both Confederate and Federal soldiers. One of the outbuildings still has more than 1,000 bullet holes visible today.
Five minutes away, Carnton Plantation is also filled with Civil War-weary stories linked to its role as a Confederate field hospital, the wooden floorboards still stained with blood. Particularly poignant is the restored slave quarters at the edge of the lawn.
The core of Franklin looks like every Hallmark movie you’ve ever seen, its storybook Victorian good looks earning it a Great American Main Street nickname. Visitors wander the shops and drink in the local culture before experiencing the best of Southern hospitality at Puckett’s Restaurant. I had the famous slow-smoked barbecue, of course, while keeping one eye out for famous country music stars.
Need a hand planning your trip? Here are the sites and services we rely on most, from booking tools to travel products we love.
Inspire your next adventure with our articles below:
Author Bio: Doug Wallace is a travel journalist, author, photographer and copywriter, principal of Wallace Media and editor-publisher of TravelRight.Today. A member of the Society of American Travel Writers, he can be found beside buffet tables, on massage tables and table-hopping around the world.
Want to discover more hidden gems and helpful travel tips? Join our free newsletter for the latest travel secrets and travel articles.
We are reader-supported and may earn a commission on purchases made through links in this article.
