Tag Archives: travel

The Parthenon, Nashville

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Friday afternoon we visited the Parthenon in Nashville. It was originally built as part of the Centennial Exposition in 1897 (out of plaster), and was then re-built out of sturdier materials. The building and the 42-foot tall statue of Athena inside are full scale replicas of the originals in ancient Greece.

We were interested in both the building and the art collection inside. The Parthenon houses the City of Nashville’s art collection, which was donated to the city in 1927 by James M. Cowan, an art collector who had spent part of his childhood in Tennessee and considered it his ancestral home. No photography was allowed in the art gallery, but some pictures are available online. Here is a link to the  Cowan Collection, with photographs of some of the paintings. I think my favorite was Widening Sea by Frederick Waugh – no picture, but this blog by Armand Cabrera has pictures of several of his works. Very turbulent seascape.

Neither one of us had any desire to have this one in our houses:

That dead fish is even more dead in person.

The art gallery visit was not enhanced by a screaming baby and a horde of college kids who were apparently there for a basketball tournament. Then again, when I was a college kid, I would not have been enthused about the art gallery either.

Exterior of the building. This one is all restored, the one in Greece has been damaged/looted over the ages and is missing most of the statues and friezes.

Look at that blue sky, does it look like a tornado warning is headed our way?

Once you are inside, there is a small admission fee, and then you can walk around the art gallery and displays of some of the history of the Nashville Parthenon, showing its history and how it was built, and re-built, and the renovations.  Upstairs you find the statue of Athena which was added to the Parthenon later, after funds were raised from private donations and school children collecting nickels and dimes.

Athena is 41 feet 10 inches tall, making her the tallest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western World. Yes, she is rather frightening.

This is the head of the medusa on her shield.

While we were at the Parthenon, they announced they were going to be closing an hour and 15 minutes early because of expected severe weather. When we got back to the Gaylord, it had clouded up and was starting to sprinkle. We were promptly sent into the service corridors by the hotel staff to wait out the tornado warning, which only took about a half an hour. Text messages were flying and everyone was checking in on Facebook. S. and I were really wishing we had our wine we bought at the plantation with us……

Belle Meade Plantation, Tennessee

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A few of us ventured out into the Greater Nashville Area to see some local sights. Friday morning, we visited the Belle Meade Plantation.

We couldn’t take picture inside the plantation house, but this is the front porch. Please note the bullet holes in the columns from the battle of Nashville. This was our tour guide, Tom.

The Plantation is actually in pretty good shape, and was not looted/destroyed as much as some others because the owner, General Harding was a friend of future vice president Andrew Johnson, who advised him to sign a loyalty oath, and when he didn’t, sent him to exile in Michigan. However, he did give protection to Mrs. Harding and the plantation. The main money maker for the plantation was thorough-bred horses.

The Plantation now includes a winery whose proceeds are used to support the maintenance of the plantation. There is evidence that used wine bottles were purchased by the plantation and those were probably used to make homemade wine.

 
We tasted a red muscadine (grapes native to the U.S.), a blackberry wine, their “Racing Silk” red, and a chardonnay (white). I purchased some of the muscadine, red, and blackberry, and had them shipped home. They are not here yet. I am hoping SOON.

The wine jellies you can see in front were also delicious.

The crypt on the Plantation. They dug up all the bodies in there and moved them to a cemetery. Still pretty creepy.


This little vine was quite happily growing out of the stone wall

An interesting old grist stone

Three grist stones.

The dairy and the view back to the plantation house.

The area around the plantation is more developed now, but the grounds are still pretty extensive. It was a very interesting tour, and besides the winery, they had a great gift shop, which featured painting by local artists. Both of us on the tour had paintings we wanted to take home. If you are in the area it is definitely worth a visit. They also had a restaurant there, but we had other plans for lunch (to be continued…..).

More Nashville

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Sorry this is later than usual, but I was still recovering from the trip and didn’t have the energy to write one last night!

Well, I had been complaining about this convention that we attend every year being back in Nashville over and over again, but now I can see the reason why. I hadn’t been in Nashville since this convention in 2008, and we had to stay at a hotel across the street in 2008. This time we actually got to stay at the Gaylord Opryland, and it is a pretty nice hotel.  It is kind of spendy so I don’t know if I would stay there if it wasn’t a business trip, but it was a lovely place to stay. Also very handy to be at the convention hotel instead of across the street.

The Gaylord has three large interior atrium spaces, with tons of plants and flower and trees. Very relaxing to walk around and enjoy the greenery, especially if you are from somewhere that it is not so green right now!

I leave you with a few pictures from the atrium – more to follow! Now, I am trying to track down my camera, which disappeared somewhere between Nashville and Colorado, hoping it turns up (especially since it has FOOD pictures on it!)

This is one of my favorites.

It was HUMID in there too, as well as outside. My skin looked great!

More Southern Fried Goodness

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Thursday night in Nashville, we ventured out to Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant. It was a Facebook recommendation and it was excellent.

I am very lucky to have two board members along who understand my quirks and don’t mind when I say “Don’t eat it yet, I have to take a picture.”

We had been told to try the fried green beans and Yazoo beer. I am not a beer person, but my two board members tried it and said it was great. I had a apple pie moonshine martini which was excellent.

I had the fried chicken, excellent.

It came with a corn cake, green beans, and mashed potatoes.

I was torn on whether to order the chicken or the shrimp and grits, so I was glad when one of my board members ordered the shrimp and grits, because then I got to sample them.

They had a lot of cardamom in them, so very Indian spicy tasting.

Mmmmmm. My other board member ordered chicken fried chicken. It was a little larger than he expected it to be.

He also gave his meal the thumbs up. We were too full for dessert. They also had a live bluegrass band, Quickfoot and the Slow Downers – they were really very enjoyable. We hadn’t been actively seeking live music, but it was really nice to have someone to listen to. A delightful evening! And on our return to the hotel, “weather alerts” including the unnecessarily apostrophed “temperatures expected to rise into the 70’s and 80’s which could lead to the outbreak of tornadoes” so that may be festive.

Southern Goodness

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I am in Tennessee for work so will give a brief report on my travel so far. First of all, apologies to those of you (Tim) that I freaked out when you thought I had another fire right before my trip. No, those were PAST fires. I haven’t had a really good one since the grease fire in October.

I would like to give some appreciation to the Denver airport for their art on display. In the bridge to the A Concourse, they have several cases of Colorado art and design. I have taken the time to walk up both sides now and look at everything, the exhibit is mostly geared toward design but it is well worth looking at.

Then I would like to tell you that if you are going to eat on A Concourse, stay away from Panda Express’ veggie spring rolls, which have absolutely no taste or texture. The hot and sour soup was a very mediocre version but it was leaps and bounds above the spring rolls. There are not a lot of good places there at the hub on A, I would go out to C and get a calzone if you have the time.

Our first meal here in Nashville was at Caney Fork River Valley Grille. This is pretty close to our hotel, and we gave it a try. Our party had the chopped steak, the filet, and the Camp Fire Fish Fry, consisting of Southern Fried Catfish, fried shrimp, Fried frog Legs, Fried Cod, a crab cake and some hush puppies and some french fries. Plus two sides: fried okra and baked beans.

Two of us shared this and it was still too much.

Fried okra and various dipping sauces.

Plus, at the beginning of the meal they bring you fried corn fritters with powdered sugar.

Sorry, I took these pictures with my phone and they are not the best.

The best thing was the frog legs. They were really quite good. The catfish was fine, the okra was very good and fresh, but the cod had way too much breading, it was better when I picked it out of the breading. The baked beans were also excellent. And the corn fritters were good. Even splitting this between two of us, it was too much food.

The restaurant also had an excellent version of Long Island Ice Tea “Backwoods Tea” which was very good and about half as expensive as the ones at our hotel.

Plus they had many interesting stuffed and mounted animals on display, including many deer with “atypical” racks. So I would recommend it if you like a place with character. If you are a vegetarian, maybe not so much.

Please pardon any random capitalization, I have been at a reception where there was Wine.

San Francisco Trip Report – Day 5

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Links to all of the trip reports from this trip:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Since I am once again on business travel, I thought I would finish up with the FINAL day of my trip report from San Francisco from Thanksgiving 2010.

Monday:  The LAST day. We have been touring pretty hard, if we were staying any longer, we would have to take at least this afternoon off to rest. But instead we will be getting on a plane, so we better fit in some fun this morning.

The most exciting moment of the morning – April found Bruce the shark finger puppet! He was between the seat and the door in the back seat of the car. It is amazing that he didn’t fall out, he had at least seven opportunities. Just shows that he loves me and wanted to stick around even though I dropped him out of my pocket. Bruce went with us the rest of the day, riding in my sweatshirt pocket, when he wasn’t on my finger making comments.

We got on the road for Fairfield, home of the Jelly Belly factory.  I love me some  Jelly Bellies, so I was very excited to do this.  NEXT time we will do wine country, this time I wanted to see Jelly Bellies. Nick and April had done this tour before, but never on a week day, so they were interested to see if there would be actual workers in the factory.

Bruce the Shark loves Jelly Bellies almost as much as I do.

We got there and had to wait about 15 minutes for our tour. This time was spent sampling Jelly Bellies, of course, they  have a sample bar where you can try one of any kind you want. They have these NASTY flavors (Bean Boozled) that are a take off on Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans, and April was just insistent that we each had to try one. I think Ken got the best end of the stick, with pencil dust, I tried centipede, Nick tried baby wipe, and April tried canned dog food, which made her dance and hop and exclaim about how bad it was and how it tasted JUST LIKE dog food smells. Well, don’t eat it then!  We had to drive the tastes out of our mouth with some normal jelly beans. Having a burp later that tasted like centipede was not very pleasant, however. Bruce was really hoping for a Human Flesh flavored Jelly Belly but no such luck.

The tour is very interesting and fun. No pictures allowed in the factory, so no documentation of that. They were making Buttered Popcorn flavored beans that day, so the factory smelled of buttered popcorn, and April hates that flavor and I love it. We got to sample the Jelly Bellies in the different stages: in the Pupa stage as I would call it, when they are just soft jelly, then with the candy coating but not polished, and then all polished of course. We got to try their new flavor for Christmas, which was Candy Cane, which tasted like, well, a Candy Cane. Like a strong mint gum drop, nothing to write home about. I tried a birthday cake one at the sample bar that was my favorite new flavor.

The tour took about 40 minutes, and at the end, you got two tiny bags of Jelly Bellies and one of Christmas candy corn. They make all kinds of candy there at the factory besides Jelly Bellies.

Bruce says why fool around with those little tiny bags of Jelly Bellies?

Then: shopping! They had showed us on the tour the sorting machine which sifts out all of the Jelly Bellies that are too big, too small, weirdly shaped, etc. (I was telling Ken earlier in the day that you could get a good deal on the malformed ones, except he thought I was saying mouth-warmed ones, and he wondered why I would want that.) So they have these “Belly Flops” in 2 pound bags in the shop, and they were on sale for 5 bags for $30. So of course I had to have 5 bags! There was some debate as to whether this purchase, along with my rock collection and olive oil, was going to put us over our weight limit for luggage.

Then back home to Richmond for one last meal together: Leftover Thanksgiving – Nick and April were bemoaning how long they were going to have to eat turkey sandwiches, so we tried to help them out with that as much as possible. We crammed everything into the suitcases and were on our merry way back to Colorado.

This is my awesome crabby sweatshirt I got at Pier 39.

No problems at security, although Kenny did get to go through the naked scanner (this was a novelty at the time), but only because the woman in front of use (again) had a million pieces of jewelry on, and she got pulled aside for the full pat down, so that put our line behind, and they were running people through the naked scanner to reduce the line. We got on the plane, and Kenny pretty much passed out and slept most of the way. Full flight again, but not as many screaming children. I finished reading the book that I didn’t like and that was mostly annoying to me, because I didn’t have anything else to read and it was really too crowded to knit.  Landed at DIA and opened up our bags and got out the heavy coats again.

Remember how I said I burned my finger with my curling iron on the morning we got up at 5:00 a.m. to leave?

Yeah, it still hurt.

Best last part of the trip: We were getting off of the shuttle bus at the extended parking lot at DIA, and this approximately 9 year old boy was looking at our largest suitcase. “That looks heavy,” he said, as we were dragging it off of the bus. “It should,” I said, “It has 10 pounds of jelly beans in it.” The look on his face: priceless. “Ten pounds of jelly beans?????!!!!”  I could tell he wished he had been on vacation with US!