Not much happened on Tuesday. I took a couple of things to a dry cleaner and returned the power cord. We had lunch at a nice buffet restaurant. Terry and Ashley went to a local beauty school and had their hair done. And Terry and I made dinner for Ashley and Carlos in Ashley's kitchen. And that was it.
This was Ashley's birthday, and was one of the most eventful days of the trip.
We started the day by picking up Ashley and Carlos and going for breakfast at the Flat Tire Diner, where I was greatly amused by this sign in the restroom - it says "DO NOT FLUSH: Sanitary products, dirty diapers, paper towels & Q-tips, goldfish and other small animals, unpaid bills and overdue library books, hopes and dreams."
After running a couple of errands and relaxing back at the house for a while, we set off for the main event of the day - a riverboat ride on the Cumberland River on the General Jackson riverboat (w). This is a picture of the boat tied up at the dock. It's not a very good picture - I should have gotten closer so I could have gotten a better picture of the boat, without the boarding ramp in the way. I never claimed to be a good photographer.
This is a picture of the main showroom, with Terry, Ashley and Carlos in the foreground, and the stage in the background:
The cruise consisted of a nice lunch, followed by a (what else) country music show called "Tennessee Legends." This is a picture of the performers - a four piece band at the back, and four singers, two women and two men, in the front.
The show name-checked a litany of performers who (they claimed) hailed from Tennessee. Included were:
I looked them up later, and not all of them were from Tennessee. But never mind, it was a fun show. The three singers (the ones in the front row in the picture) took turns singing the classic hits by each one of the stars mentioned. The woman in the picture holding the fiddle, whose name is Amber Leigh, also did a fiery rendition of "The Devil Went Down To Georgia." After the show, in keeping with my tradition of bringing home music from each of my vacation trips, I bought two of her CD's. They're quite good - here's a link to her website.
In the meantime, the boat was sailing leisurely down the Cumberland River. The cruise started on the east side of town, near the Grand Ole Opry, sailed to downtown Nashville, and turned around and went back. Here are a couple of pictures of the downtown Nashville skyline, as seen from the front of the boat:
After the cruise, we dropped Carlos and Ashley at the house, and we went back to the hotel, where Terry relaxed while I did some laundry. Then we picked up Carlos and Ashley again, and we all went out to dinner at a wonderful Cajun restaurant called Cajun Steamer, where we met up with Ashley's mother Susan, and her husband Ed. My apologies, but I never got a picture of them.
After dinner, we all went over to Susan and Ed's house for dessert and socializing. We watched a couple of Netflix comedy specials, and Susan and Ed and I played two rounds of rummy tiles.
What are rummy tiles, you ask? (You didn't ask? That's OK, I'll tell you anyway.) Rummy tiles is a game, similar to the card game Gin Rummy, but played with tiles rather than cards. According to the Wikipedia article (w), the official name of the game is Rummikub (pronounced "rummy cube"), but I've always called it "rummy tiles." Susan and Ed called it "rummy cubes."
Anyway - I used to play this game with Terry's mom all the time. And she won almost every time. But this time, I won both games! I felt vindicated.