Last summer we were sitting on the beach late at night, and we were talking about life. She mentioned that she has ALWAYS wanted to go to Nashville, and despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to make it happen that spring. I tucked that bit of information away in my brain. Brittany is one of my absolute best friends and I’ve known her for 15 years now. She’s pretty much my family. So, when I was piecing together my travel plans for my trip to Maui, I got on American Airlines and looked to see what it would cost to go to Nashville. For two round trip tickets, in March, my miles covered us at 100%. It was probably 9pm late one night in December when I called Brittany and said “Okay hear me out. I’ve got two tickets to Nashville in March, covered at 100% sitting in my cart. Should I buy them?” She didn’t even hesitate when she said YES.
The rest is history! This was kind of a big deal to us. We are both single moms to young children, and we are high school teachers who don’t really get to do a lot of big things for ourselves very often, if at all. We chose March because the stretch between February and April break as a teacher is rough, and it gave us something to look forward to. We took some personal days and did a long weekend and it was one of the best weekends of my entire life.
Nothing was going to bring us down. Not the super delayed flight when leaving, not the fact that it was freezing when just days prior it was balmy in Nashville, literally nothing.
The first night we arrived about 2.5 hours later than anticipated. We dropped our stuff at our air bnb, and immediately went back out and took an Uber. We didn’t even change, we just wanted to explore! It was the best. It was incredibly overwhelming at first. Eventually we found a bar that looked large enough and didn’t have a huge line to get in, and there found this amazing band we followed the rest of the weekend, haha.
Throughout the weekend, we didn’t have an actual plan, outside of the Grand Ole Opry. We did whatever struck our fancy and it was so amazing. Brittany and I travel SO freaking well together!
We ate amazing food (Sun Diner is a MUST for anyone who goes to Nashville! I could do a whole blog post on that in itself!), heard incredible music, decided to pop into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and had one of the greatest nights ever on Saturday night. We got all dressed up and went to the Grand Ole Opry. I had no idea what to expect, and it was better than I imagined! There was an incredible line up of artists that night, and they ended with a surprise guest – GARTH BROOKS. I still can’t believe I’ve now heard “Callin’ Baton Rouge” live. Afterwards we played a ton of games at Dave and Buster’s while we waited for crowds to die down, then went back downtown.
I didn’t have my camera with me at all until the end of our trip. An uber dropped us off at the Parthenon and then we spent about two hours wandering our way back downtown and I took photos of things that struck my fancy along the way!
Seriously not exaggerating when I say this was one of the best weekends of my life. One day we plan to go back together, and more importantly, this has sparked a new yearly girls trip weekend for us! So looking forward to our next one! Here are some of my favorite photos from the photo walk.
So beyond grateful to get to travel like this!!
Here’s a quick breakdown on what it cost us for the weekend:
- flights $80 in fees – the rest was covered with miles
- room $597 – we paid for 5 nights, even though we were only there for 4, because we didn’t want to check out at 10am Monday and haul our bags around Nashville while we explored some more until we had leave for the airport at 3pm.
- Grand Ole Opry – $90 each for a ticket
- Food, Ubers, Drinks – We each paid around $300 for four days of rides, food, etc. The uber rides were the bulk of our costs!
Linda is a Portland-based photographer specializing in weddings and creating family legacies from Portland to Boston and across New England. You can see more of her work online at lindabarryphotography.com, on Instagram, or on Facebook. If you want to reach out directly: linda@lindabarryphotography.com.
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