Nashville but no Opry!

One of the main reasons for coming to Nashville was to see the Grand Ole Opry, I think that would be most people's first stop, hmmm! It was CLOSED! To be fair, it was flooded in May and opens in about two weeks time, so we've just missed out. We headed out to The Hermitage, which was on our to do list anyway. This was the home of the 7th President Andrew Jackson. The mansion house is really well preserved and stands pretty much how it did back in the day. There was no photography permitted inside the house but the rooms were large, well furnished and reminded us of Gone With the Wind. Andrew Jackson went to war with us Brits in 1812 and won! The big house is the rear of the Plantation Mansion

He kept a quite a few slaves these are the outhouses they lived in

In the afternoon we took the city trolley tour for an hour but the trolley was being repaired so we were in a small bus. It's not a particularly large city so we were able to visit the park which has a replica of The Parthenon and the Chattanooga Train.

Both evenings we went to Broadway which is downtown and had very good food and enjoyed the live bands in the Honky Tonk and The Stage bars.

It’s 9-11 and we’re flying to the US of A!!

Security was fine at Heathrow but it took us two hours from landing at Atlanta to getting in the cab to the Holiday Inn for the night. Atlanta airport is definitely one to avoid in the future, unfortunately, we have do it all again tomorrow.

Photo is Phil's dinner on the plane, roast beef and yorkshire pud!

The hotel was fine, a standard Holiday Inn Express just outside the airport, no bar though, so that’s a minus! Beds were comfy , air conditioning noisy, shower was great, breakfast was mediocre but all for $108, can’t be bad.

Sunday 10 September

Back to the airport in the morning for our flight to Nashville, it was marginally better at security but we weren’t happy to find that we had to each pay $25 for the privilege of having a suitcase and Phil was overweight which cost $90. I’ll leave you readers to make your own comments on that!

Arrived in Nashville, picked up our hired car with Sat Nav and found our hotel very easily. Just going for dinner at a place called J Alexander’s which is just next door!

One more sleep!

Sue and Tommy have arrived which can only mean we're flying tomorrow! Our flight to Atlanta Georgia is at 3pm tomorrow and Heathrow's Terminal 5 is just an hour's drive away. We usually get a lift or a taxi but as there'll be lots of suitcases Phil's decided to take our car and we've booked valet parking which makes for an easy day. We hope!

See you in Atlanta (or maybe just wait until Nashville on Sunday!)