Nashville, Tennessee.

The home of country music is a city of over 600,000 population, so touring can be a challenge. Parking in the downtown area is relatively expensive. When we arrived in Nashville, we selected a hotel that is just across the street from Nissan Stadium, (on the other side of the arena from where the above photo was taken.) The home of the Tennessee Titans is built along the Cumberland River only a short distance from Broadway Street, the famous Honky Tonk row.

You might recall a recent post here at Journeys featured a walking tour of Honky Tonk Row. Our hotel desk clerk suggested that instead of driving there, a short 10 minutes at most, we should take a taxi. The fare is inexpensive from our hotel and amazingly less expensive than parking fees. Visitors who want to enjoy a bit of exercise with their tour can also rent a bike from one of the bike rental stands.

We visited Nashville on our way to our family reunion in Lynchburg, Tennessee. We stayed overnight there and met up with some other family members who did the same. It was my nephew and his wife who clued us in on a golf cart tour. Several companies offer the tours, and you can often park in their lot free during the tour, and in our case they let us keep the car in the parking lot after our golf tour. They dropped us off at a museum and we found our way back to the car much later in the day. By the way, I got no advertising revenue for this post or photo of one of the golf carts in the photo above. There were six of us in our cart, including the driver so my wife, Lynn, and I were facing rearward. Another cart pulled up behind us at a red light and I snapped this pic.

Possibly the most glamourous way to tour the city is one of the horse drawn carriages. We didn’t explore this option, though it certainly looks like fun. A quick Internet search indicated the carriage rides, at least from one company, are only about 20 minutes long. Our golf cart tour was close to two hours, with stops along the way. One of those stops is at the Court of 3 Stars, a circular courtyard with a 95-bell carillon.

The carillon, pictured above, is at the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. The 95 bells represent the 95 counties in Tennessee and the musical heritage of the Volunteer State. Located at the north end of the State Capitol, at the top of the hour, the bells play Tennessee-themed songs. Our golf cart tour stopped here and we spent some time touring the park before hopping back on the golf cart and moving on. The gallery of images included in this post is somewhat larger than usual and features sights from both the golf cart tour and an unguided walking tour. You could spend lots of time wandering through music-oriented museums, or you can just enjoy the sights and sounds of Music City. Actually, we did both, and you can, too. Click on an image in the gallery below to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

Our group on the Golf Cart tour.

Window washers at work.

Plenty of glass and steel these days.

Cumberland River.

New skyscraper under construction.

View of the Capitol from Bicentennial Mall.

Part of the 95-bell Carillon.

Golf Cart Tour.

Lots of glass to clean.

Bike Rentals.

Home of the Titans football team.

Carriage tour of Broadway.

John