Tag Archives: museum

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Nashville in October

An early morning trip from our downtown Dallas Hotel to the airport. Dallas airport is big – you gotta know which terminal to get dropped at. We wanted terminal E, unfortunately an Australian E sounds too much like an American A – or an American A means a few more dollars when all along it was American E. Learning experience, taxis and airports = money. This extra few minutes also added to what we thought would be ample time at the airport to “why don’t you have more people checking bags”. Our we would have time to grab some breakfast at the airport ended up being no time for nothing. The flight out of Dallas was fine with AA, except as we are not their frequent flyers we get whatever seat allocation is left which means I was close to the front and Caroline was in the last row. Not too much of a problem except we again had no time for nothing at our interchange at Charlotte and our terminal being nowhere near the one we landed at. Again a very nice flight this time on American Eagle.

Landed at the very peaceful, laid back, relaxed Nashville and yes, went for the taxi + airport, which was actually very good. We were staying in the Vanderbilt area, which is about half an hour walk from what Nashville is renown for – honky tonk bars and country music. We’d done Nashville before so didn’t need to hit the bars – we could stay up our end of town, which is the university end of town so plenty of bars of its own. Our hotel was the Aloft which is a hipster kind of place and very nice – that nice the maid did not even take our tip. But the barmaid did add a couple of beers to our tab which I’d already paid cash for – she was very apologetic and the jack daniels pour made up for it.

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I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now entertain us

Nirvana.

Going back through the weeks when in Seattle we visited the EMP museum, which is near the base of the space needle. This museum is about popular culture but its main focus is music. It was one of the places we wanted to visit and is also maybe not a mainstream tourist mecca, like the space needle, which has a base made from souvenir shops and even a busking pan flute band with ponchos and CDs.

The EMP was quite enjoyable – if you have any interest in that kind of thing. As well as permanent exhibits, they rotate through exhibits. Current exhibits for our visit were all great: Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, the lure of Horror movies, icons of Science Fiction and worlds of Myths and Fantasy. Something for everyone – the music diehards or those interested in two people/band that changed music; and the horror, science fiction and fantasy nerds. And you should have seen the sic-fi and fantasy nerds – they were literally wetting themselves and some were even disputing the fact that some dagger from Lord of the Rings was the actual one.

We started off going through the history of guitars – the music is very much guitar orientated. This was good, especially if you have any interest in guitars. We used the iPods they give you to listen to the displays and music but gave up after a while otherwise we’d probably still be in the history of guitars hall. Great to see the old guitars. Then moved on to the two key exhibits: Nirvana (excellent) and Jimi Hendrix (maybe not as good but still great).

Then we hit nerdsville – starting off with sic-fi and what I said about some people wetting themselves was not far from the truth. These people knew everything about the weapons on display, the costumes on display, the dalek on display, anything that was on display. This moved into horror, which I am a bit more a fan of and for things like Jason’s mask from Friday 13th, or the Alien and Terminator, and clips from films where they discuss why the films were as good as they were, like the Exorcist – made me kinda want to wet myself.

Then the myths and fantasy and as I mentioned above, there was a group there that knew more about the exhibits than the museum displaying them.

This was a really interesting museum, with a good cafe and some good merchandise. Very interesting architecture as well.

Here’s a few snaps and also some of the space needle. That’s kind of interesting but we didn’t waste money going to the top as the fog would have meant nothing more than an expensive ride in a lift. If you go to Seattle, go to a club to listen to the music, go on a ferry, visit the Pike Place market, see the eye and if interested go to the EMP. However, we have rated that maybe Seattle is not high on the revisit list but we are pleased we did visit.

And still plenty posts to come …

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Is Elvis Still Alive?

Not sure if Elvis is still alive or not but he sure is in a lot of places. Memphis he obviously was, and Nashville there was Elvis stuff everywhere, and let’s not forget Tupelo, Mississippi.

Tupelo was where Elvis was born so we thought we better drop in and have a look at his little house. They say it takes a minute to look inside and there is a museum there but we didn’t check in to either. A few more Elvis souvenirs because you can never have enough and on the road again.

Take note that the official sign says that Elvis did die in 1977.

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Every Day We Make It, We’ll Make It The Best We Can

Sounds a little like our trip – every day we make it – but this is a post about the best tourist thing we have done so far (although Caroline probably prefers the buying of cowboy boots in Nashville as pretty high up on the list – and pretty high up on the price list too but what the heck, you can’t get them in Australia and the dollar is pretty good).

About an hour or so South East of Nashville is a small town called Lynchburg. You may or may not have heard of it – but you would definitely have heard of its world famous product – Jack Daniels Tennessee Whisky.

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And There are Museums in Nashville

Another must see is a visit to the Ryman Auditorium where the Grand Old Opry originated. It’s quite an interesting history built in 1892 by Captain Tom Ryman whose original intention was to run the preacher out of town because he was affecting his business of alcohol and gambling but instead listened to one his sermons that influenced him so greatly he built the preacher a tabernacle instead.

We did the backstage tour of the auditorium which is still used for performances and was voted as the best music venue in the world for accoustics. Really interesting history, particularly the part where they were going to pull it down but instead it was sold to Gaylord Industries who restored it for $10,000,000.

You can’t go to Nashville without a visit and it would be a great venue to see someone perform so if you do decide to visit, check online to see who and when (tickets sell-out almost as soon as they go on sale).

The guitar and clothes are Johnny Cash’s and June Carter’s – Caroline would not allow me to get on stage for a bit of Johnny Cash Karaoke.