Nashville Y'all

I decided to get out of St. Louis for a bit and hit up Nashville. I've never been before and neither had my friend, Jacqueline, so we packed our bags and headed south. After about a 4 hour drive, we arrived in Nashville. 

We decided to go to downtown Nashville, aka the honky tonk area. We went to Rippy's Smokin' Bar & Grill. We got a burger and pulled pork and listened to live music and enjoyed the nice weather.

We had enough of live country music. We wanted to switch it up, and headed to the Vanderbilt area later that night for food and drinks. Our first stop was The Patterson House. It had a cool vibe. They are known for their specialty drinks, so we ordered some recommendations from the bartender. Making drinks is truly an art to the bartenders. They are pretty serious about making delicious drinks. A labor of love. I forget the names of our drinks, but mine was fruity...and had whiskey in it (yikes!!) but it was tasty. Jacqueline's had bitters and egg whites. She claims it was good....we also ordered humas and goat cheese balls. And they were fabulous. 

After The Patterson House, we headed down the street to Soulshine Pizza. Again, we listened to live music (this time, it wasn't über country), had a drink, and did some people watching. 

Today was filled with shopping and food. We went to the 12th Avenue area. The street was filled with boutiques, restaurants, wine bars, and a lovely park.

The shops were unique. Some boutiques and some vintage shops. One place had these beautiful stone hand made crosses. The guy said that a local Nashville man makes the crosses. 

This store also had some brittle by a local guy as well. He gave us a sample of the bacon brittle...it was...strong. Then we tried a sample of the bourbon brittle. Not too bad!

After the brittle tasting, we got a craving for ice cream. Jenis was the place to go! Delicious ice cream. 

Naturally after ice cream, one craves burgers. So we ate lunch at Burger Up.

Burger Up had a neat atmosphere. We went to just about every shop on 12th avenue. Everyone kept telling us to go to the Gulch area, so we headed that way. Again, this area had a cool vibe. We did a little more shopping at Urban Outfitters and a boutique called Blush. We spotted a juice bar and wanted to see what that was all about. After tasting a few juices, Jacqueline bought the Snap juice with apple, carrot and ginger and I bought the Refresh juice with green apple, cucumber and lemon. The juice is all natural. Nothing added to them. Needless to say, our systems were cleaned out right away. 

What's on the agenda for tonight? Honky tonk!