A Weekend in Nashville

Music City offers honky-tonks, hot chicken and country legends

By Jacob Nguyen

Earlier this year, I road-tripped to Nashville, TN with friends to see singer Tove Lo – an artist you wouldn’t normally associate with the capital of country music. However, Tove Lo was performing at the historic Ryman Auditorium, which is a great first stop on a weekend visit to Music City.

Located just four hours north of Atlanta, the city of Nashville has a little something for everyone – even if country music isn’t your thing. The drive up takes you over the Smoky Mountains so prepare for some cool views and your ears popping from the altitude. And you will definitely want to take a car, because Nashville doesn’t have any public transportation other than buses and a commuter train from downtown to Lebanon, TN.

There are plenty of Airbnbs in Nashville, but we decided to stay in a hotel for this trip. We chose the Hyatt Place Downtown (hyatt.com) since it was less than a five-minute walk to the Ryman and steps to Broadway, which is where you’ll find all those bars and honky-tonks with live music spilling from every doorway.

The Ryman (ryman.com) is a gorgeous former old church building that became home to the Grand Ole Opry concert broadcasts from 1943 to 1974. In the lobby, you can see artifacts and history of the building, but you can feel the history of the place once you’re inside the hall with its church pews still intact. There are regular tours if you’re not seeing a show.

Since we were in town for the concert, we decided to stay a couple more days to check out the city and go barhopping along Broadway. Think of it as Bourbon Street, but instead of New Orleans jazz, you’re hearing country and rock. There’s lots of drinking and dancing going on.

One of the places we stopped in was Tootsies Orchid Lounge (tootsies. net), which is a legendary bar known as a filming location for “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” It was wall-to-wall with people so be prepared. We also waited in line to get into Legends (legendscorner.com), which has strong drinks and a mix of tourists and locals out for a night to hear live music. Whether or not you’ll like these places depends on how much you like boisterous crowds and loud music. I’m not a country music fan, but it was still a fun time.

When it’s time to eat, you have to try a Nashville staple: hot chicken. And by hot, I mean spicy. We went to Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack (princeshotchicken.com), which has been serving up bird for nearly a century. You can order tenders, wings, or whole chickens ranging from lite heat to XXX heat. I had the latter and it made me break out in a sweat. Hot!

For breakfast, we had to stop at another landmark – The Pancake Pantry (thepancakepantry.com). I love pancakes and these were probably the best I’ve ever tasted. I had a fluffy stack with bacon and eggs as my sides.

If you want to dig deeper into Nashville’s country roots, visit the Johnny Cash Museum and Patsy Cline Museum, which are in the same building in downtown. There are instruments, clothing, letters, and much more about these two legends.

We also drove over to Centennial Park, which is home to the Parthenon, which is a full-scale replica of the original in Athens, Greece. If you’ve seen Robert Altman’s classic movie “Nashville,” you’ll recognize this spot from the big political rally scene at the end of the film. There’s also an art museum inside. The park is a beautiful place to walk around or have a picnic.

A great way to close out a weekend in Nashville is at Riverside Park for some selfie moments. The John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge over the Cumberland River offers amazing views of the downtown skyline.