#AshLaurenUSA Trip: Nashville

Like in Denver and Minneapolis I spent my time in Nashville exploring the city, eating at lots fantastic food places and drinking coffee.
Not only exploring Nashville, this time we also hired a car exploring the beautiful Tennessee country side to see the Jack Daniels Distillery.

Where to start?
I might as well start with where we stayed at, the Marriott at Vanderbilt University. Overlooking the Vanderbilt stadium, home of the Vanderbilt Commodore, the University football team. Would you believe that the stadium has the capacity to hold around 39,000 spectators for a University team!

Not only overlooking the stadium we also had the Centennial Park across the road.

Sites:
- Centennial Park:
On our first day we had a nice stroll around the park. It has a full scale replicate of The Parthenon, which was interesting and also a little weird. But not having been to Athens, yet, it was great to be able to see this building and imagine how the original would have looked back in its day.

-  Tennessee State Museum:
This might be hard for most people who know me to find, but I did spend around 3 hours in the museum. Why? For one, it was the coldest day we had in our whole trip and was hard to be outside for too long, and, secondly, it really gave me a good insight into the early years of Tennessee and USA.

- Jack Daniels and Loveless Cafe road trip:
What an exciting road trip to the Jack Daniels Distillery and then onto the Loveless Cafe, for a hearty classic Southern style American food.

Firstly driving on the wrong side of the road. That in itself was one of the highlights of the trip. We rented a real fancy American car, the Lincoln MKZ. What a way to cruise the American country side.

Side note: don't forget to take a car charger with you in unexplored places, otherwise, like us, once you reach your destination you might run out of power on your mobile. Lucky for us we found a Walmart where we could purchase a mobile car charger to help us get back on track.


Jack Daniels Distellary is situated in a town called Lynchburg, about an hour and a half drive from Nashville. The tasting tour of the Distillary was very interesting and we purchased a Single Barrel bottle which we were able to put a special engraving on the side. I should point out that the county which the distillery is located in is still a dry county, so we just purchased the actual bottle and the whiskey in the bottle, was free. Lynchburg also had that old style feel to it and was just interesting walking around the little town itself.

The second part of our road trip was having dinner at the Loveless Cafe.

What was not to like at the Loveless Cafe, fried chicken.

Along with biscuits (which are like our scons in Australia, but they serve them in Southern America with the main meal), Southern Fired Catfish (yummy), Pork BBQ with sides of Mac N Cheese, Fried green tomatoes and slow cooked green beans. Real Southern American comfort food at its yummiest.

Lets say, nothing was left on the plates.

- Nashville itself:
Just walking around and exploring the city was interesting.
Here are just some pictures I took while walking around the city:

Food:
Along with eating at the Loveless cafe, here are just a few of the other places we dined at, you can of course see all of them via using our hashtag, #AshBurgerz, via Instagram, Twitter or Facebook:
- Firefly Grille:
Firefly Grille menu changes each season. I had a really nice steak with feta, fresh tomatoes pasta dish.

- Pancake Pantry:

We couldn't go to America with out eating pancakes. This place is famous for them and the queue was around a 30 minute wait when we went. The wait at peak times can be over an hour! All I can say is that they didn't let us down, they were scrumptious and well worth the wait.

- Hog Heaven BBQ:

 - Fox's Donut Den:

Donuts donuts donuts!!! The owner let me go into the kitchen and see them make their donuts and pick some fresh donuts. They were so delicious that I ate them so fast and forgot to take a picture of the donuts!

Coffee:
I found some good coffee places while in Nashville. Like:
- Crema:

- Hot & Cold:

- Fido:

- Cafe Coco:

- Dose:

In the end Nashville had a lot to offer and I ended not ticking of everything on my to-do list. Which just means I well have to return another day to finish the list off, hopefully Nashville will have me back another time.

Don't forget you can see all of the places we dined at and had coffee on our food hashtag, #AshBurgerz, via Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
You can also see all the pictures/tweets/facebook comments from our trip on our trip hashtag, #AshLaurenUSA and you can catch Laurens thoughts on her blog, here.

#AshLaurenUSA: Minneapolis

We only had two nights in Minneapolis, which doesn't help when visiting a new city for the first time. I found this city to be layers, the first time you see it doesn't look like much, but once you get to the layers underneath the surface you start seeing another city. Due to the snow and how cold it gets during winter, the city has this skyway network that connects each building and creates a comfortable area for you to walk around the city while being inside.

My first day here, I didn't realise this and while I was walking around the city, on the normal streets, it seemd like I was walking around a ghost town and was wondering where all the shops and people were. Of course most of the shops are in the skyway system, which I learnt later.

Also, some of the outer city areas/suburbs, like where the Bryant Lake Bowl resturant is located, seem like some nice areas to visit.




Food:
With limited time picking where we wanted to eat, this was going to be tough and in the end we ate at some nice places.

- Bryant Lake Bowl:

This was a great place to eat and also had that American style ten pin bowling at the back. Like the one you would see on the 'Ed' TV show where you had to write your scores on paper, no computer screen - which added a little extra fun to playing.

We had a great Pad Thai along with a Green Curry.

- Crave:
While walking around 'The Mall of America', we ended up having happy hour here at Crave. Where we had some sushi and a mini pizza, along with Edamane glazed in a nice soy sauce.

- Food Trucks:
While on my walking adventures I stumbled across ten food trucks in a row - it blow my mind. Later learning they hibernate during the Winter and have just starting coming out now that it is Spring. I went the vegaterian option, the food truck was called The Moralomnivore, where I had some fantastic wild rice sliders, with sides of mushroom fries. I can still taste those fries, yummy!

Of course you can check out all the food places we visited on our hashtag #AshBurgerz on instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

- Coffee:
Downtown Minneoplis lacked coffee options most being chain stores, it wasn't till the second day I discovered Angel Food, that was just around the corner where I was staying. They also had some yummy donuts.

I also discovered the nice walk/bike trails along the Mississipi River in Minneoplisi.

From the first day I really thought that Minneapolis was going to be me in the hotel room during the couple of days stay but once I discovered the skyway system I enjoyed my time.

Dont forget you can follow our hashtags #AshLaurenUSA and #AshBurgerz and you can read Lauren's blog, here.