Our trip started with a minor disaster.

When Terry and I travel, we bring our pillows with us. For one thing, Terry has a wedge pillow, to help with her sleep apnea. Also, we each have extra firm pillows, which we much prefer to hotel pillows, which are usually so soft and downy that they provide no support whatsoever for your head. So we cram all three pillows into our largest suitcase and bring them along.

Now, on this trip, we were bringing several bottles of wine as gifts for friends. And I was trying to figure out the best way to pack them. Of course, I couldn't bring them on the plane; they would have to be in checked luggage. So I had the bright idea to pack them in with the pillows. That way, they'd be surrounded by padding, and squeezed in tightly.

Of course, you know where this is going. When we got to Nashville (late in the evening, after a layover in Phoenix), I couldn't find our large suitcase on the baggage carousel. I finally found it at the baggage office, wrapped up in plastic, smelling of wine.

Well, two of the pillows had pillowcases, and all three of the pillows had removeable and washable outer covers. So after we picked up our rental car and drove to Ashley's house, we unpacked the pillows, removed the covers and pillowcases and threw them all into the wash. As it turned out, only one of the pillows got really soaked... naturally, it was mine. So Carlos lent me a pillow, and I left my pillow lying on Ashley's utility room floor for the week. To my surprise, by the end of the week, the pillow was completely dry, with no wine smell that I could detect. Of course, it's permanently stained purple (yes, it was a bottle of red wine that broke).

Lucia and Esmond had flown in earlier in the day, and were waiting for us. So after finishing our laundry, we all drove to our hotel and went right to bed. It had been a long day.

This was the first real day of the vacation. Not much happened during the day - Terry, Ashley and Lucia went to get their hair and nails done. Then in the evening, Carlos and Ashley went for dinner with Ashley's parents and Carlos' Mom, while Terry and I and Lucia and Esmond went to Papa Turney's, a BBQ restaurant recommended by Ashley:

The restaurant featured live music, but apparently, we were there too early:

Live music later

There was interesting artwork on the walls:

The two black and white pictures are Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix, but I don't know who the other two are supposed to be. Of course, they might just be generic pictures, not intended to represent any specific people.

I talked to the cashier (I should have asked about those pictures) and found that Papa Turney is indeed, a real person, the owner of the restaurant (the cashier was his brother). Michael "Papa" Turney, I discovered, was a blues musician as well as restauranteur, and had CD's for sale. Of course, I bought one.

The restaurant is on the shores of Percy Priest Lake, a man made lake formed by (of course) Percy Priest Dam

After dinner, we went to see a show at the Opry. As it happens, both Lucia and Esmond are fans of American country western music, and Nashville, of course, is the country capital of the world. So of course, we had to go to the Opry. In fact, we went twice that week.

Now, I've written about the Opry at some length in my trip logs of my earlier trips to Nashville, and I'm not going to repeat all that here. But for the sake of those who missed the earlier episodes, here's a brief recap:

The Grand Ole Opry (w) isn't a place, or a building - it's a radio show. More specifically, it's a weekly country music concert broadcast live every Saturday night since 1925 on WSM radio in Nashville. For many years it played at the Ryman Auditorium (w), a venue in downtown Nashville - which was originally built as a church. In 1974, the show moved to the new Opry House. The Ryman fell into disuse, and was almost demolished, but a number of musicians and fans successfully campaigned for its restoration.

Of course, the Opry House has concerts on other nights, besides the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday. On Thursday nights, they have a Country Classics concert, which was the show we saw that night. As its name implies, it focuses on country music classics of the past, while the Grand Ole Opry show features more contemporary country.

After the show, we stayed for a backstage tour of the Opry House. Among other things, we saw several of the dressing rooms, each of which is individually themed and decorated - it reminded me of the Madonna Inn (look it up if you don't know what I mean). Here's one example:

In the green room... that's where the artists wait for their turn to go on stage. It isn't necessarily painted green, that's just what they call it - don't ask me why... Where was I? Oh, yeah - in the green room, there was this mural:

As we walked around backstage, I saw a group of chairs arranged in a circle, with a keyboard and guitar standing nearby. I could just picture a group of musicians sitting in the circle, rehearsing before a show, or just jamming for the fun of it. I thought that I would love to be a fly on the wall when that was happening.

High up on the wall, looking down on that circle of chairs, were these paintings of two of the Opry's biggest stars: Roy Acuff (w) and Minnie Pearl (w).