Nashville Impressions

We were in Nashville to complete the sale and transfer of Harold's kite book collection. With an afternoon free, we connected with our friends, Bill & Bitsy. Bitsy sang at our wedding, and we have vivid memories of Bill offering $10.00 to each of the other ladies to not catch the bouquet. He had plans!

We took off for the Country Music Hall of Fame, right downtown. I had to chuckle when Bitsy would make a beeline for any fiddle in the displays. Not only can Bitsy sing, she plays violin and has played with the Nashville Praise Symphony. The exhibits were interesting, and I was intrigued by the various stage performance outfits. Bill and Harold tolerated us and the myriads of people. I'm not sure if the place is always that crowded, but it was rather crowded that day.

Stuck, stuck...

I think noisy would be my overall impression of Nashville. There was a Predators game going on, resulting in $30 event parking and yellow and black jerseys everywhere. There were several rooftop bars filled with people. Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University both had homecoming games. Party buses, blasting music and filled with bachelorette parties, were everywhere. Scooters were dodging in and out of traffic and on and off the sidewalks. There were just a lot of loud, noisy people. Nashville is a trending city. As Bitsy said, I think I would have liked it better as a "ain't" city.

Looking at the visitor guides, we did see several places we'd like to visit another time. The zoo for one, and the Lane Museum for another. Bitsy also highly recommended the Christmas season at Opryland. So, we'll be back another time and hopefully, it won't be quite so busy.

On the pedestrian bridge

Kid in a Candy Store

While in Hershey for the RV show, we took a morning off and slipped over to Hershey's Chocolate World. It was right next to the Giant Center where the show was held.

I was agog. From fluffy pillows, socks, t-shirts, keychains, umbrellas, and just about any other imaginable merchandise, I was grinning like the proverbial kid in a candy store. The retro style t-shirts reminded me my youth. I saw a Reese's logo t-shirt like the one I used to have. Then there were the Reese's t-shirt pair of the commercial.
"You've got peanut butter in my chocolate."
"You've got chocolate in my peanut butter."

We took the free chocolate tour. The other activities involved a fee admission and we opted not to do those. The 30 minute chocolate tour was interesting in that it showed how the chocolate is made. I think the most interesting thing to Harold and me was that Mr. Hershey located the factory where he did because of the number of dairy farms in the area. Fresh milk was good and plentiful without a lot of transport.

We downed a frozen cocoa from the food court area. Wow, was it intensely chocolate. It was really hard not to eat ourselves into a sugar coma or buy tons of cute stuff. I kept reminding myself that was downsizing to a much smaller wardrobe. Sigh...