Nashville Cats

Daily Mileage=315; Trip Total= 11,438


Before we left for Nashville today, we decided to drive around some of the other sections of St. Louis. We drove up to the Grand Center and Central West End areas of the city. The Basilica of St. Louis is up in this area and as you can see from the photos it was gorgeous. We even made it for part of the Mass!







The church construction was started in 1907. Its architecture is Romanesque on the exterior with heavy Byzantine aspects visible on the interior. There are 83,000 square feet of mosaic art created by 20 artists and installed over a 75 year period. It was quite impressive.



The surrounding neighborhood looked like Bronxville or Scarsdale. Very upscale and it even had a few high rise apartment buildings, probably condos. Further up the street, which is wide and looks more like a boulevard, you come upon Forest Park. It was the sight of the 1898 World's Fair in STL. They have placed museums, a boathouse and the zoo inside the park. It resembles Central Park with a skating rink and lots of bike and jogging paths. It is very well maintained and the surrounding streets aptly compare to Central Park South & West as well as well as houses along Fifth Avenue. It was good to see a totally different side from the downtown section of St. Louis.







We drove through some heavy rain but thankfully it was only for a small portion of the trip. We decided that this was the first really bad weather day we had for entire journey.














We arrived at Nashville and the first sight we saw outside our hotel was the Wiener Mobile with the license plate, "Big Bun." Do we only stay at the best places in a town or what? We then strolled down Broadway which is a major street in Nashville and old like one would expect a "Broadway" to be. It has lots of souvenir and cowboy shops and of course restaurants. It has one of the largest Hard Rock Cafes we've ever seen with a cool Gibson guitar painted on the wall. It's right around the corner from the stadium where the Titans play. We stopped at the Big River Brewing Company and of course tried some of the beer. It's originally from Chattanooga and wasn't bad at all.

By the way, here's Rich with Elvis. Now you know what kind of shops we're talking about!!!

Tomorrow we're off to explore the city and will be singing country western music all day long!

Good night. Love&Joy, Mare&Rich