Carolinas, Georgia & South Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Alex Leviton [139]
Down the block is a strip of cafés, boutiques and music venues called Elliston Place, a favorite hangout of Vandy students and punk-rock teenagers. Check out Elder’s Bookstore, where Randy Elder still runs the store his father, Charlie, opened in the early 1930s. The dusty stacks are the go-to source for Southern literature, and books on Nashville history and the Civil War. It’s the kind of place where you can walk in looking for a novel and walk out three hours later with three hardcover histories on 19th-century guitar-making, an invitation to dinner at the house of a man known only as “the Professor,” and a profound new understanding of speculative metaphysics.
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LOCAL TREAT: GOO GOO CLUSTER
Take heart: this chocolate-coated clump of peanuts, marshmallow and caramel bears an unfortunate resemblance to a cow patty, but Nashville’s favorite sweet tastes better than it looks. The Goo Goo was America’s first combination candy bar, invented in 1912 at the Standard Candy Company on First Ave. Goo Goos, the unofficial candy of the Grand Ole Opry, are given away upon check-in at downtown’s Millennium Maxwell House hotel.
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Just off Elliston Place in a sprawling old mansion, Cafe Coco has pie, veggie quesadillas and free wi-fi all day, every day. Watch live music and drink cheap longnecks at the back bar or shoot the breeze with the purple-haired philosophy majors chain-smoking on the patio at 4am.
Head back downtown and have a spiritual experience at Ryman Auditorium, the former Union Gospel Tabernacle-turned-“Mother Church of Country Music.” The soaring Gothic Revival building was commissioned in the late 1800s by crusty old riverboat captain Thomas Ryman, after his soul was saved by a popular Christian evangelist. These days, the 2000-seat Ryman hosts distinctly secular acts such as Lou Reed and cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard, as well as serving as the occasional home to the Grand Ole Opry. Check out the calendar in advance and catch a show here if you can. If not, the tour is neat for architecture and music history aficionados.
Speaking of the Opry, the venerable country music variety show’s current HQ is a vast modern brick complex some 10 miles northeast of downtown. This area, known as Music Valley, is a sprawling suburban landscape of chain restaurants, themed budget motels and souvenir stores - if you need a Confederate flag shot glass, commemorative Dolly Parton T-shirt or banjo-shaped ashtray, this is the place.
Since so little of downtown is actually on the water, it’s easy to forget that Nashville is a riverfront city. Remedy that with a ride on the General Jackson Showboat. Day and evening cruises on the 300ft paddlewheel riverboat can include everything from breakfast buffets to glittery music and dance extravaganzas. Sure, it’s gaudy. But it’s a theatrical good time and offers amazing views of the Nashville skyline (the pointy eared “bat building” dominating the horizon is the BellSouth tower). Tours depart from the Opryland complex in Music Valley.
For dinner, skip over to the up-and-coming East Side, where Margot Cafe has become a favorite with local foodies for its creative touch with rustic French and Italian dishes. Think shad roe and Parmesan polenta, veal chops with morel risotto, and Riesling ice cream. The cozy space, with its low light and exposed brick walls, is an oasis in what’s still a rather gritty area.
By evening time, you can just wander up and down Broadway, pausing outside any bar to listen to whoever’s on the early stage. Don’t like what you hear? Just move along; on any given evening you’ve got your pick of dozens of acts - most places start with the up-and-comers in the late afternoon and move on to bigger names as the night goes on. But whatever you do, you should not miss spending an hour or two at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the purple-painted queen of downtown nightlife. Hattie “Tootsie”