Weekending - November 30, 2018

Weekends just go by too fast!  This past one was action packed with lots of highlights so here goes ~

Friday night was our work holiday party at the St. Louis Zoo.  Huge success!  The St. Louis Zoo has a fabulous light display called Wild Lights and before our party began, we had the opportunity to roam around the zoo admiring the lights while sipping on hot chocolate.  Thank goodness the weather cooperated and it was pleasant to be outside.

Saturday morning we were up and ready to take a road trip to Nashville with our friends, Debbie and Larry.  How much does a person with really bad packing skills need for one overnight trip?  This much:

We drove straight to a hot chicken place, Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, I had read about in Reese Witherspoon's book Whiskey in a Teacup.  (Side note -- I LOVED Reese's book by the way.  My friend, Linda, gifted it to me for my birthday and I read the whole thing in less that two days!  If you are like a copy, click HERE)  Now, back to the chicken - Reese really knew what she was talking about.  The chicken was GOOD!

The location we visited was on Ewing in a strip mall.  Now this place is not fancy.  As a matter of fact, there was what appeared to be a bullet hole in the window next to where we sat.  Their flavors are plain, mild, medium, hot, xhot, xxhot and xxxhot.  Eric and I went with the mild because we are wimps.  Debbie and Larry were brave and went with hot.  Everyone loved their choices!  Our mild selection had a tad bit of heat and the hot made sweat appear on our friends brows.

From there, we checked into our home-away-from-home for the night - Renaissance Nashville Hotel.  This hotel is located within walking distance of Broadway and all the main attractions downtown.  As an added bonus, they have a car service that will take you anywhere in a 3-mile radius of the hotel. We loved our room which came with a great view of the city.

They had the cutest little camper-turned-coffee bar in the lobby!

I'm not going to lie, one thing that I always look for in a hotel are the amenities.  The Renaissance did not let me down with their Aveda Rosemary Mint selections!

We changed clothes and got ready for our night out.  First up was the Opry at the Ryman.  The Ryman had been on our list of things we wanted to do in Nashville for a while and Saturday night we were doing it!  I'll be honest, I didn't know a single person on the playbill.  Eric was excited to see Tracy Lawrence (who I thought was a girl - it's not).  We had bought tickets fairly last minute and we were in the very last row upstairs.  Turns out, those are great seats!  The venue is small, so no matter where your seats are you're not far from the stage.  All the seats are church pews, except that last row.  We had individual, padded chairs.  No sore bottoms for us!  If I were to go back (and I hope to someday), I would intentionally buy those seats again.

After the show, we had reservations at Husk.  When we were in Charleston a few years ago, we had tried to get in the Husk restaurant there and couldn't get a reservation.  I had been wanting to try it ever since.  We had the complimentary car service from the Renaissance pick us up at the Ryman and deliver us to Husk.  It did not disappoint!

The rule at Husk is "if it doesn't come from the South, it's not coming through the door".  We started with the pimento cheese and I followed that up with shrimp and grits.  YUM!

When dinner was complete, we headed back to Broadway to check out the honky tonks.  We landed at Rippy's and grooved in the music for a bit.

Sunday morning we slept and then went to Another Broken Egg Cafe for breakfast.  Luckily, we used the NoWait app that allowed us to be in line before actually showing up to the restaurant.  We snacked on biscuit beignets before our food arrived.  Appetizers for breakfast - yes, please!

With full bellies, we meandered our way back over to Broadway to see what music was spilling out of the honky tonks.  No matter what type of music you're in to, it's a pretty good bet you will be able to find it somewhere on Broadway!

We weren't quite ready to head home yet, so we decided to visit the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.  Oh my gosh -- these wax figures are so darn real looking!  Besides seeing the figures and getting a perspective of the celebrity's size, you could read an interesting blurb about each one also.  We got our tickets off Groupon and saved about half the price.

Monday morning came quick - too quick!  It was such a fun weekend with friends and the best part is we made memories to last a lifetime.  Those, in my book, are the best!