Keep Austin weird... and Nashville just the way it is.

arrival in Nashville

the runners, complete with previously unseen  number plate

Hollywood with a touch of twang seems like a bit of a stretch but your intrepid reviewers fell in love with Nashville. Leaving our intrepid fellow travellers to "hang out at the hotel" (which apprently now means go for a 9 km run around the city),




we immediately hit up the fine Scotsman for some Jeremy-style "duty-free" booze; there may be stores offering a wider selection, or more helpful attendants, but none so perfectly named or, we suspect, able to offer 1.75 litres of Hornitas tequila for under $30.

that tiny blob between two enormous cars is Paul, carrying approx 4.5 litres of booze

We were sorry to have to pass up the Boot Country three-for-two deal on cowboy boots, but for some reason only one of your intrepid reviewers was keen and was unable to persuade the other intrepit reviewer or intrepid fellow travellers to join the party. And as that one intrepid reviewer already has a pair of cowboy boots that have probably seen more than their fair share of London, going in for three additional pairs seemed, at the time at least, a bit much.

We were already getting the sense that Nashville, despite it's reputation as the capital of Hicksville, is actually a more of a less self-satisfied Austin - possibly because it is (rightly, in the view of at least one of your intrepid reviewers) embarrassed about launching the careers of some truly awful musicians, and our visit to the spectaclar Cat Bird Seat (despite it requiring us to book at 5am a month earlier) cemented this view.

A separate post of our delicous meal and tastey drinks here will follow. 

Our verdict: Nashville has it going on. There's no risk of red wine being served with sushi here (sorry).

After dinner we followed the advice of Cat Bird Seat's very cool chefs and servers and dissed Tootsie's in favour of Robert's western world. And what a western world it was, with Billy Joe on the trumpet and any number of locals two-stepping away on the dance floor, the miller high lifes didn't taste too bad at all. The music, oh the music. Both your intrepid reviewers were in heaven (despite their sometimes diverging musical tastes).