My Travels in Nashville, TN!! // ft. lots of history, taylor swift fangirling, & murals

I love traveling.

My love for traveling isn’t something I talk about often on my blog because a) I don’t travel consistently and b) I don’t usually post about things besides books. But today I’m excited to be interrupting my regularly scheduled bookish programming to bring to you my very first travel-related post! I guess I could try to tie in books to this post, but yeah, that wouldn’t work. 

In July, I was lucky enough to be able to take a road trip with my parents to the great city of Nashville, Tennessee. We went for the purpose of touring colleges, but in the two and a half days we spent there, ended up hearing a lot of great music, seeing the sights, and eating a lot of good food.

I tried to take as many pictures as possible because I knew I wanted to document our trip in a blog post! All the pictures in this post were taken by my not so professional phone camera unless otherwise specified. 😉

Without further ado, let’s go to Nashville!

It’s about a ten hour drive, give or take, from my house to Nashville, and while I love road trips, ten hours is especially long?? and most of the time the view was just trees.

Thankfully, I don’t get carsick so I was able to read, watch Queer Eye, and listen to music! We also stopped in Memphis on the way, and went to a well-known barbeque restaurant as well as saw the location of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the National Civil Rights Museum, which is at the same spot.

Even though the motel where MLK Jr. was assassinated was two seconds off a major road, even though it was so hot and there were tourists and locals and cars everywhere, there was something so powerful about seeing the memorial to him.

It was one of those moments where I realized that an event in history, which seemed so far off and disconnected from me and my life when I learned about it in school or read about it in a book, was real and made such an impact.

If you ever get the chance to visit Memphis, I highly recommend stopping here! We didn’t get to go in the museum, but if I go back, I’m definitely going there. We almost didn’t stop but I’m so glad we did.

Nashville being known as Music City, one of the major attractions is called Broadway. It’s a street in downtown Nashville that consists of a lot of bars, honky tonks, gift shops, a few restaurants, and tons of live music.

We went there twice during our trip- once the first night we got there, and once the next day. Obviously, I’m a minor and have no interest in going in bars anyway so I had a lot more fun the second time we went because it was in the afternoon and the environment was way less intense.

They do have bars that are family-friendly, although most don’t let minors in after 6 pm! The second picture was taken from the rooftop of Blake Shelton’s bar, which was probably my favorite spot we went to there because it was so pretty to see the whole street, as well as part of Nashville’s skyline, from so high up!

If you’re a fan of country music or even just music in general, walking along Broadway is a great experience because literally every bar has a different artist or band performing. Singing on Broadway is how so many stars got started, so I kept thinking, “maybe this person is the next Taylor Swift and we don’t even know it.”

At the edge of the street, there was a mural of country music legends. This is kind of an odd photo of it, but y’all- Taylor Swift was on it!! I kind of completely freaked out when I saw that because I didn’t know the country music community still acknowledged her roots in country music. And yes I definitely took a picture with her because why would I not.

Since we were on Broadway pretty late and I basically couldn’t go into any of the bars, we stopped in this record/CD store. I thought this picture summed up the old-timey, country music star vibe it had going on. XD

Also, I just need to acknowledge the fact that I have never seen so many cowboy boot stores in my life. Like, yes, I have Boot Barns where I live because some people there are Country™, but this was insane. There were probably four or five boot shops on this single block??

All of them had a buy one get two free sale, which was hilarious because I remembered the same sale from the last time I was in Nashville, which was six years ago. One pair cost about three hundred dollars though, so I can see why there’s a sale.

To end this section about Broadway, this is a panorama I took from a rooftop bar! Overall, I would definitely recommend visiting Broadway if you go to Nashville. It’s a really iconic street and it embodies the country music spirit that everyone expects to find in this city.

Just remember to go before evening if you’re a minor and of course take a picture with the mural of Taylor Swift. 😉

The second part of this post is dedicated to miscellaneous adventures we had in Nashville! Some of these were planned and some just happened in a spur of the moment kind of way. Is it just me, or are spur of the moment adventures the best ever.

Our first adventure was going to the Country Music Hall of Fame!

I went here on my first trip six years ago, but I didn’t remember any of the exhibits so we decided to tour it again. Honestly, even if you’re not that big of a country music fan, I still recommend visiting this museum!

I probably didn’t know three-quarters of the legends that were in here, but I loved it nonetheless. They had tons of clothes and instruments that belonged to really famous country music stars, both past and present, and had things like Elvis Presley’s car and the car in Smokey and the Bandit.

Even though I wasn’t an avid fan of most people whose belongings were in the museum, I still got the feeling of, wow, these people are famous and they lived and they owned this *insert possession*, and it’s amazing that it’s right in front of me.

I continued to freak out when I saw how much Taylor Swift stuff they had in the museum! I really wasn’t expecting there to be anything about her, but there was the dress she wore in the Love Story music video, as well as her iconic silver guitar.

There was a whole exhibit about songwriting, and it had some of her outfits from the Reputation era! I don’t have a picture of it here, but there was also the cat head she wore in the Look What You Made Me Do video. Can you imagine how much I was fangirling at this point?? Now multiply that by a hundred and you’re where I was.

I didn’t expect The Country Music Hall of Fame to be as awesome of an experience as it was, so even if you’re unsure about whether to go, I definitely think you should.

We went to a few restaurants based off of online recommendations, but one of the most popular ones we went to was Hattie B’s, a chicken restaurant.

It’s really famous, as seen by the line stretching all the way out the door! It was so crowded that we tried to go there two other times, but couldn’t find parking. The only reason we ended up going was because our air bnb was just down the street, so we actually walked there and avoided the parking altogether!

You know when you’re traveling and you have one of those moments that makes you realize just how small the world really is? I had one of those moments while standing in line outside of this restaurant.

I was wearing a shirt for the college my sister goes to, and the people behind us struck up a conversation, asking if we lived in the college town. I told them no, but told them the name of the city we actually do live in. Please excuse me saying “city” a lot of times as I attempt to tell this story without actually giving away where I live. The daughter, who I think was a junior in college said, “oh my gosh, my roommate is from that town!” With further conversation, we realized the girl’s roommate actually went to my high school and the roommate’s sister is in my grade.

I just think that’s so crazy! In Nashville, states away from where I live, we got in line right by someone whose best friend went to my school. What are the chances?

As for the restaurant, I’d say it was good and worth the wait, but not necessarily the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. I’d still go if you go to Nashville though, it’s a staple!

For the last portion of this post, I have some pictures of the most trendy and Instagram-worthy part of Nashville- all the murals there.

Me being me, I wanted to see some of the most famous Nashville murals and, of course, take pictures with them. On our last afternoon, we had a few hours of free time, and my parents kindly agreed to go driving all around Nashville, searching for various famous murals.

Sadly, I don’t have many photos of them to share on here because all the pictures have me in them, but here’s one on the side of the road. I didn’t take a picture with this because it would be lie (I was not, in fact, born in Tennessee) but it showcases well how there are literally murals everywhere, just on the sides of random buildings on random streets.

We soon realized that the heart of Mural Nashville is actually in Hillsboro Village. This is a really cute area with a lot of restaurants, walkways, and 90% of the murals you see on Instagram. (The ‘I Believe in Nashville,’ the blue and white striped wall, the ‘Make Music Not War, etc.)

I really liked this one! It was also in the Hillsboro Village. One thing I didn’t expect about the murals is that there were literally lines to take pictures with them- and I was there on a random Thursday afternoon in July.

The more popular ones had so many people waiting for a photo! I found it kind of awkward because a lot of people were somewhat watching, and I find it so hard to take a picture when I feel like people are staring. But it’s okay, it was worth it to see all the murals.

That concludes my Nashville trip! We did a few more things that I wasn’t able to document (Grand Ole Opry and tours of colleges), but this post covered the main Nashville experiences I had.

I hope this was enjoyable to read? I’m usually screaming about books on here, so it was odd (but fun) to talk about something different. If you want to go to Nashville, hopefully this could offer some recommendations of places to go or things to do.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful week!✨

Have you been to Nashville? Do you want to go? Would you have fangirled over the Taylor Swift stuff too? Have you had a “it’s a small world” moment? I’d love to talk with you in the comments.

Credits for the image in my featured image >> Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash