Last weekend wasn’t my first trip to Nashville, but it was my first trip downtown. Apparently the last two times I went, I didn’t make it too far out of the Opryland comfort zone of my work conference. Other than the race, I only really spent Thursday night downtown. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge hockey fan and one of my goals is to eventually make it to all of the arenas in the league. I’ve already checked off quite a few (including four in a tour de hockey in 2013), so when I realized that the Predators would be playing in Nashville the day before I was planning to drive up, I knew I wanted to try to get a ticket to the game! Unfortunately, the Predators locked down Ticketmaster sales so that you could only buy a ticket if you were in their viewing area, which includes the states that surround North Carolina, but not actually North Carolina because we have the Hurricanes for our hockey team. I called their box office and was very rudely told that I should find someone else to buy the ticket for me and when I explained that the only tickets available on Ticketmaster were for credit card entry only, the “customer service” rep said “well, I can’t sell you a ticket.” I called Ticketmaster and their customer service rep was much nicer about the situation, but unfortunately still couldn’t help me. I kept trying to buy a ticket online, but didn’t have any luck and then Wednesday night, all the tickets were all gone from Ticketmaster (apparently they opened up ticket sales 24 hours prior to the game and promptly sold out). So, instead, I headed to StubHub and got myself a ticket.
Thursday morning I headed out early to get to Nashville in the late afternoon and after a quick stop off at the race expo, I headed back to the hotel for a quick nap before the game. Due to the TV schedule, the game didn’t start until 8:30pm local time, so I was able to get a good nap in before heading back downtown. While I was there in the afternoon, there were a lot of people wearing Blackhawks jerseys, but by the time I made it back down that night, the street had turned into a sea of yellow jerseys.
It ended up being a great game, with Nashville taking the win and forcing a game 6 on Saturday night. In my previous trips to Nashville, I wandered around the Parthenon in Centennial Park.
The park includes Lake Watauga,
and a statue of John Thomas who was a businessman and President of the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in 1897.
Plus, there’s also the only surviving Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Locomotive #576,
and some designer fish as well.
Most of my time in Nashville has been spent at the Gaylord Opryland & Convention Center which is an amazing building, with two atriums inside. In the two weeks I was there for work conferences, I think I only wandered outside once or twice, but I never felt confined indoors within the massive building, which includes its own indoor boat tour through the atrium. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the atrium, but it’s definitely a place I would recommend checking out if you’re up in that vicinity.
What’s your favorite place to visit in Nashville?