Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Spring Vacation: Day Five, Part Four - Downtown Nashville

 Hello!  For this week's travel post,  I am continuing on with Day Five of our Spring Vacation.  On day five, we visited Nashville, Tennessee.   We spent the morning at The Hermitage, then we went to  Centennial Park,  and the Entertainment District:  yes, we crammed a lot in to one day!  After walking down Broadway in the Entertainment District,  we then ventured out into the rest of the downtown area.

Our first stop was the beautiful river walk.   Nashville lies on the Cumberland River, and the city really takes advantage of the beautiful river views offering lovely paths and benches for strolling and viewing.
 I have been to many cities in my lifetime, and I would have to put Nashville on the top of my list for having one of the prettiest and cleanest downtown's.  It is quite obvious that they really work hard to keep the city clean, well-maintained and preserved.  They do an excellent job of incorporating modern buildings and architecture with the older more historic buildings.  Pictured below is a beautiful old building with some modern updates.

 A row of historic buildings now used as restaurants, shopping, and entertainment.
 There was an old fort on the river walk but it was closed for some renovation so we couldn't go inside.
 A lovely urban garden and terrace.

 This is another view of the river walk taken from the opposite side.
 There is a famous alley in Nashville called Printers Alley.  Two large newspapers,  ten print shops, and thirteen publishers called this alley home at the beginning of the twentieth century, thus giving it this name.   In the forties the alley became a nightclub and entertainment district.  Today,  it consists of four bars and an adult entertainment bar;  not the most wholesome place to visit, but it's nice just to walk through it and see all the historic buildings and signs.






 I loved this enclosed shopping/dining area called The Arcade in downtown Nashville.
 Nashville is filled with beautiful, old churches like the one pictured below.
 A modern office building, which is obviously new, yet the style blends in with all the old historic buildings quite well.
 My favorite part of Downtown Nashville was their capitol building.  It is a very impressive building that sits high on top of a hill overlooking the city.
 You have to walk up A LOT of steps to get anywhere near the building, and you see many impressive sculptures along the way.




 The hike up the stairs is well worth it for the view of the city below is breathtaking.  There is a beautiful walk that goes all around the capitol building so you can get a 360 degree view of the entire city.  I was surprised to see this grave site on the capitol grounds too:




 To give you an idea of the scale of this masterpiece, this picture of the capitol was taken down below in Legislative Plaza.  The plaza is so lovely.  There are many benches, and water fountains to enjoy.



 And finally, a couple more pics of some amazing churches:

 And if walking the entire downtown sounds too exhausting:  you can take a horse drawn carriage ride too!
Have a great day!  Amy

1 comment:

  1. Great photos Amy, happy to read that it is very clean city! I am sure we will stop there if we ever decide to drive to Florida.

    ReplyDelete

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