Sunday: The Old South

Dear Diary,

woke up and got ready to eat breakfast.  My mother went and got directions.  We went to her Catholic mass at a church called Holy Rosary.
http://www.holyrosarynashville.com/

After mass, we went back to the hotel and thought about what we could do today.  My mother wanted to see a plantation, and the Parthenon, so I picked what was closest to the Parthenon.  It was Belle Meade, which means pretty meadow.
http://www.bellemeadeplantation.com/ You take take a Virtual Tour on their website.

The $10/person (with AAA or coupon) tour was a glipse of the manor and it was given by a nice woman in period costume.  They also had a restaurant above the Visitor’s Center, but we didn’t eat there.  After the house tour we walked around the grounds at the other buildings.

Because of the establishment of numerous higher education institutions Nashville had earned the nickname the "Athens of the South", so in 1895 they built a replica of the Parthenon of Athens for their Centennial celebration.  It was only supposed to last for 6 months, but the people liked it so much that they replaced the materials with those more permanent.  That is what stands today at Centennial Park, a very big and beautiful park.  It was most impressive and has a huge statue of Athena inside with gold plating.  It’s worth the admission to go inside the structure to see the statue and they also have an art gallery inside.
http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/

The funny part about this part of the day was that it started raining hard as we were about to leave, so we had to wait for it to slow down.  We would of bought an umbrella, but it HAD to be the $30 Van Gogh painting ones, so we passed.  We returned to our hotel after this.

We didn’t know what to do next, since it was about 4pm on a Sunday and most attractions closed soon.  We didn’t know what else to do, so I mentioned going downtown again.  It was evening and I was lucky enough to find a parking spot on the street.  You can park free on the weekends.  We walked down Broadway and it kinda’ reminded me of New Orleans, bars with country music coming out of their open doorways.  We walked and browsed a few shops, then decided on getting some dinner.  Since we were just there Friday and knew it was a good place, we went back to Demo’s Spaghetti & Steak.  We both had stuffed baked potatoes this time.  I had mine with really good chicken in sauce and my mother had hers with a seafood mix.  After this we went back to look at a shop I previously didn’t finish seeing and I bought a Mallard shirt for $7.  It seems like we’ll be coming back to Ohio with a lot more shirts.  Then we checked out the Wild Horse Saloon, and my mother said we should have eaten there after the fact we had already eaten.
http://www.wildhorsesaloon.com/

We went back to the hotel and relaxed.  Our last night here.