As we drove out to where the Opry is located we drove past the Opry Mills mall, which is where the Opry land theme park used to be. The mall is still closed from the 500 year flood they had last May. During the flood, the Opry had 4 feet of water at center stage. Everything we saw in the building had been replaced and they were able to save the circle of wood that was taken from the Ryman. All the repairs to the Opry house were completed in 4 months, but the Opry never missed a beat and was housed in another building for their weekly radio show, it's the longest running radio show ya know so they couldn't just up and stop. The backstage tour was very cool, we came in the artist's entrance and got to look at a few of the dressing rooms and even got to walk across the stage, it was very cool, I'd love to see a show there sometime. http://www.opry.com/
Every Opry member has a mailbox backstage
All the dressing rooms have a theme
A great quote by Brad Paisley (click to make it larger)
The lockers for band members and artists
This chair rail shows the flood line from the flood in May
The green room area where the artists wait to go on stage
The view from backstage area looking out
Stage
The circle
A.Drama.B and I in the circle
After the Opry tour we headed back to relax a little bit ordered some pizza, watched TV and listened to the Tuesday night Opry show on the radio. Then we waited for our hearse to arrive for our Ghost tour!
I stole this from their website http://www.nashvilleghosttours.com/ so you could see our pimpin ride, we didn't have the canopy on for our tour. Every time we went by someone they would hoot and holla at us, it was pretty cool. We decided that this would be a good idea for the drive-in so if you ever see a hearse for sale cheap, let us know!
Our first stop was the old Capital records building, it now sits empty after several tenants had moved out due to crazy happenings, which made it that much more creepy. It is haunted by two sisters who used to live in the mansion that was torn down to build the tower. Google Jacob Schnell mansion to find the story.
Outside the music studio where Kevin Hughes was murdered, he was going to blow the whistle on a pay for play scheme where the record companies would pay the radio and charts to push their singles higher on the hits list. http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132437&page=1
Belmont Mansion
Nashville City Cemetary
The oldest single residence home in Nashville, now a fancy restaurant
The Tennessee State Capital
The Hermitage Hotel
The Redneck Comedy Bus Tour took us around Nashville and pointed out some sights we had already seen but gave us some good stories and was really funny, we had a good time and was a great way to end the trip.
If you love country music Nashville is a must see, there are so many more things to see and do we just didn't have enough time. The weather was perfect and the company was great, I had such a great time and it was definitely nice to get away for a little while... I just wish the warmer weather would have followed us home, I'm still waiting on Spring to get here!
We got to visit all those places with the Total Access Attraction Pass you pay $50 then get to pick from a list of 17 activities and free entry to the Parthenon, it paid for itself in two visits, totally worth it. Hope everyone enjoyed the pictures, leave comments of places you visited in Nashville that I didn't get to see so I can add them to my list OR better yet leave me some comments on places I need to see next, I'm leaning towards Savannah, GA because everyone knows I heart Georgia! Shoutout to my Georgia fans! (hopefully you'll be up for a visit soon otherwise I'm definitely going to have to come visit y'all!)
You had a busy trip. Looks great.
ReplyDeleteVery nice pictures! Seems like you had a great time.
ReplyDeleteSavannah, GA is very pretty and I think you'd like it a lot. These southern places def seem more "you" than Central Illinois.