Country livin'

NASHHHVILLLLEEEEEEEE! So, here we go. Its awesome here. Our hostel is about a 20 minute walk away from 'downtown', which is where all the ho' downin' occurs. On our first day we just walked there and looked through all the crazy memorabilia shops..took some comedy photos with a carbon fibre Elvis statue and got some lunch in a bar (its the only place to have lunch in Nashville- they seem to have got it right!) There was a band a playin and we celebrated not being tired and ravaged by bugs. The bassist in the band was amazing, someone mentioned something about him being in a film about Elvis, everyone here is trying to make it, in the fame sense..y'know, the old chestnut about every waiter being a budding young star.. well our waitress was a sullen old cowboy boot who didn't deserve the tip that we HAD to give- compulsory tipping defies the point, i think i even made some kind of old lady comment to Han about how she'd get a surprise if she waitressed with that attitude in England.
Seriously, Hannah and i might as well have gone on a tour to Napa Valley, were such oldies. Our favourite phrase is 'one of my pet hates is........' needless to say, if someone had given me a quarter every time either of us had said that we'd be flying to NYC...
Anyway, the second day we decided we must see the Country Music Hall of Fame, (i was secretly hoping for a big busted shrine to DP, nothing of the sort occurred however..) A very nice lady in the ticket booth said she could tell we were English because we were so polite.. (in truth she could tell we were English because when she asked for our zip code, we said we were from England) but anyway, she was nice. The hall of Fame is 3 floors of memorabilia, cowboy boots, fringed shirts and even Elvis's Golden Cadillac (complete with 40 coats of opaque crushed diamond and fish scale paint). It was coooool! i learnt quite a lot about the Hank Williams Clan, there was an extensive display on him, and Han got all elbow bargey excited at the Taylor swift things, small girls HAD NO RIGHT TO STAND IN FRONT JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE SMALLER! (joking, she was nothing like that) they had some of Dolly's stuff and many people enjoyed our little country dance at the interactive Dolly station...We had a good day.
Today we went to Elliston Place, Lonely Planet says its nice, but in fact, its just a row of shops. Most of the streets of most of the places we've been are deserted, but i think its just because noone walks anywhere. well, you know what they say about mad dogs and Englishwomen. We went to an old fashioned 'soda shop' and got the traditional meat n'3 which, we discovered to our dismay, was as close to a school dinner that I've got to in 13 years..but not necessarily nasty. Were all for trying things, so we got some mac'n'cheese, which was disappointingly out of a packet, and some fried okra and turnip greens (quite bitter) and coleslaw, han had crab cakes and i had baked ham. it was all fine, the piece de resistance was the Vanilla Soda we shared, some kind of weird ice cream soda combo that was, obviously, delicious!
Then we got a coffee at this old Frat house called Cafe Coco which was full of those funny triangle flags that you see in college dorms in movies. It was good coffee too for a change. We are bracing ourselves for a longggggggggggggggg greyhound journey to Washington DC tomorrow evening, and then, tea at the Whitehouse!

Love you all, see you sooooooon!

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