Nashville Weekend

Whew! What a whirlwind weekend! I just got back from Nashville and I guess technically I'm now a Nashville recording artist (ha!). Our worship minister, Allen, and his wife Ann took a group of us to record on Keith Lancaster's new a capella praise and harmony CD. There were 15 of us, and honestly, I was not looking forward to cramming into a 15 passenger van with the 12 that were carpooling. The good news was that because of insurance issues, we got 2 12-passenger vans. So we had 5 people in our van and each got a row to ourselves.

Recording was not as tedious as I thought it might be. There were about 200 people there. We all brought earbuds, which we plugged in to listen to the beat and pitch of the songs. Keith was very energetic and although he's very talented musically, he wasn't rude or demanding when we goofed and had to re-record something. Here's our group in the chapel turned recording studio and Ann and I (with Allen in background) at a late night food run on Friday night.

We recorded Friday night and Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the day sightseeing. First we went to the Parthenon, which was an awesome full-scale replica of the actual Parthenon, including a 41 foot statue of Athena, an artist's rendition of what the original may have looked like....pretty stunning!

Next, we headed to the GOO, as Allen called it....The Grand Ole Opry Hotel. Who knew a hotel could be so grand? It's the largest non-gaming resort under one roof in the world. I had heard it was pretty awesome. I guess it was one of those kinds of things where you had to see it to believe it. This place was huge. It had several large areas that really created a relaxing ambience. One area looked like a vignette from a Southern landscape, with gardens, balconies, and boutiques housed in Southern style architecture. There was a canal and we took a canal ride through this particular atrium. There were waterfalls you could walk behind, trails to explore and beautiful vegetation. Here are some shots (that don't do it justice).....

Here's a cool perforamance artist appropriately named, "deVine". She was pretty intriguing.

After GOO, we did a little shopping at the Opry Mills shops. A few locals recommended we eat at Demos' restaurant downtown so we set out in search. We found a parking garage and cleared the height requirement clearance bar. However, once we got in the garage, we found that our van really wasn't going to fit. We had some tense moments as we literally scraped under a few of the clearings.....That was definitely worse than the nails on the chalkboard sound.

We left this morning at 5:30 am. And wouldn't you know, we opened our doors and saw this....

First time it had snowed in Nashville in 3 years. We made it home though, thanks to Ann and Allen's driving.