Nashville, Tennessee Baby

Turning 30-years-old is certainly a milestone. You’re exiting your twenties, and entering your thirties. Kinda know what you’re doing, kinda don’t. I didn’t quite get to celebrate my actual 30th birthday during 2020, because the COVID Pandemic was very much in full swing with restaurants, bars & travel being closed and restricted. To make up the lack of birthday celebrations in 2020, I decided to go big by celebrating my 31st in good old Nashville, Tennessee!…

and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to book (way early in advance) and stay at the newly opened Graduate Hotel. Three of us stayed here, and we met up with one of my friends who lived in Nashville.

The Graduate Hotel has a variety of themed hotels all around the United States. Nashville’s Graduate Hotel is themed around Dolly Parton. You’ll see what I mean in the pictures below. The hotel rooms are very “Dolly-esque” with pink striped rooms and bed canopies. The rooms come with a view of Nashville. The best thing about the rooms are definitely the decor. Complimentary popcorn is provide as a welcome snack.

The hotel has three main attractions: Poindexter Cafe, Cross-Eyed Critters Karaoke Bar, and the White Limousine/Governor’s Pool.

Poindexters Cafe is a cute coffee stop with grab and go breakfast food. I ordered a Pina Colada Matcha Green Tee, and chia pudding bowl.

Cross-eyed Critters is a speak easy style bar hidden in the hallway. Our group went here every night before going out downtown to Broadway. It was a fun way to start the night and sing karaoke. This place has Nashville decor and a kitschy robotic animal band as entertainment. Drinks were strong but pricey, and food was reasonabl priced. Tacos for $3!

I made reservations two weeks in advance to have my birthday dinner at the White Limousine restaurant on the roof top of the Hotel. Good luck making a pool reservation because it probably won’t happen! Even though we had a dinner reservation, we were still able to access the outside patio, just could not access the pool. We each had a frozen cocktail, champagne Jell-O shots, frites app and a meal, and of course a slice of cake!

During the day on Saturday, we ventured to The Dive Motel. A classic dive motel, pool, and bar. I wish I took more pictures here because it was bad ass. The pool was first come first serve, so I would recommend getting there right when they open. I will say, this place is 20 minutes outside of Nashville, and filled with locals, so it’s not as busy and overly crowded as Downtown Nashville pools are.

10/10 would recommend this hotel/pool for an activity to cool off.

Downtown Nashville/Broadway Street is considered Music City. This is where stars are made! You’ll find little bars and huge celebrity backed bars. We stopped at Tootsies, Dierks Bentley Whiskey Row, Blame Shelton’s Ole Red, Jason Aldeans Bar, and a few others. I also got a chance to ride the mechanical bull at Wild Beaver, and we went to Taco Bell, yes!

Every bar has a band playing every minute. My favorite bar was Jason Aldean’s bar, just because it was so much fun to dance at.

Another thing we did was walk around The Gulch. The Gulch has hand painted murals, boutiques, cafes and things to do. (See mural pictures below)

Our main way of transportation was Uber, Lyft, scootering, or walking. Weather was a steady 98 degrees during the day, and fell about 79 at night. Very humid.

Overall, this was my first time ever to Nashville,

and I think 4 days is a good amount of time to explore most of the city. There is still so much we didn’t get to see (like 5th and Broadway shopping) and a few out of city stops, but I feel our trip accomplished everything I wanted it to. We had a great time.