Thursday June 8th part 2

Thursday June 8th Part 2

Once we arrived in Nashville, we changed interstates to get around to the east side of the city. Our second straight day of arriving in rush-hour. Yahoo. Randy's completely amazing at navigating and driving through hordes of traffic and got us quickly to our hotel. We were staying at the Radisson about six blocks away from their hotel the Marriott. I had forgotten that I booked the cheapest room possible which two double beds in it so we splurged and upgraded to a suite on a higher floor with a king bed and a sitting room. 

We debated how we would get downtown for the evening as we had already been running late arriving from Memphis. Krista and I grabbed the shuttle for $30 which included a return route from downtown. Randy and Jeanette called Uber for half the cost we paid but we were told that getting back from downtown would be triple the cost so we would see later which one worked out best.

The shuttle dropped Krista and I off at Bridgestone arena, where the Nashville Predators play hockey. There was a hockey game tonight except that it was in Pittsburgh but that did not mean there was one less person in the downtown core as the arena sold tickets for $15 each for people to fill it and watch the TV screens inside. We thought we might go for half an hour just to experience what a building would look like at the Stanley Cup final but tickets sold out 15 minutes before we got there. We grabbed free tickets in order to stand in front of the building with the other 5000 people standing around all excited as the series was tied two - two.

The atmosphere downtown was beyond electric as there were thousands of people there for hockey and even more there for the country music festival. Streets were jampacked with food trucks and trailers as literally thousands of people going in both directions in the entire downtown core. Live country music streaming from every Bar block after block as we walked eastward to get to the Nissan Stadium football arena where the evening concerts would be held.

We stopped in at a beer garden for a quick bite to eat and a beverage and I realized I left my earplugs back at the hotel so Kleenex would have to suffice. We continued eastward underneath a huge bridge that we had to climb several flights of stairs to then walk over the river with thousands of people to arrive at the stadium. We are not used to seeing a gargantuan stadium on the outskirts of the city core but it was absolutely magnificent towering over top of the Tennessee River just out of downtown. When we arrived, we were able to get our weekend passes quickly and entered the building. Randy and Jeanette were on the floor near the back and we were in the second level in the back right corner. At first I was disappointed that we were so far away but in hindsight we only have 30 steps to get to the washroom and were surrounded by some wonderful party animal people from St. Louis Missouri who knew Kelly Chase so we have something in common right off the bat. 

The first entertainer was Kenny Rogers who surprisingly is still able to remember the majority of his lyrics. He came out singing Ruby - Don't take your love to town, the Gambler and then had a female singer who coincidentally was the mother of the female singer of Lady Antebellum. They did a couple of songs and concluded with Islands in the Str

eam. The funniest moment was after Kenny's first song where he complained that hardly anyone was singing along with his music and that he had just gotten back from China and they all knew the words to his songs and singing very loudly and couldn't even speak or understand English! The crowd had a good chuckle at that and participated much more after that!

As you can imagine prices for everything or exorbitant at the stadium. Bottles of water were five dollars and a can of beer was $10. Hard alcohol is $12-$20 a glass. Food was $10 or more for a small portion of something. It's a good thing we ate before we arrived. 

Brett Eldridge performed next and we only knew one or two of his songs. Then after a break we were completely shocked and surprised to have a guest artist come out and perform. Garth Brooks! The entire place with bananas as everyone sang every word of his songs and he did a montage of five or six put together and got the crowd rocking immediately! 

Once he finished we kind of felt bad for Cole Swindell but he did a good job of playing most of his party songs and thanking everyone 97 times for everything he ever had in his whole life. Dierks Bentley did a fantastic job as usual and one of his favourite lines was the fact that he was excited to have Garth Brooks open up for him tonight for a change.

Miranda Lambert came out and did a few rocking girl songs and a couple sad ones and finished up with some crowd favourites.

Luke Bryan closed the show with seven or eight songs and got crowd in a great mood. All in all it was a fantastic opening night and a wonderful opportunity to have really good comfortable seats in an amazing stadium. Then came the unenviable task of getting back to our hotel on the east side of the city with 60,000 other people all going in different directions.

Randy fortunately had an Uber app on his phone and grabbed the first one he could find for around $20. Our driver Jerry would be waiting for us a few blocks away in an abandoned parking lot next to a seedy hotel. As there were so many vehicles leaving the grounds this was as close as he could get. We stumbled around thousands of people and made our way to him only to be completely surprised by the enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge this character had! With the most boisterous voice and laugh, he transported us back to both our hotels filling us in on all the great places to eat and things to do during the day sprinkled in with life stories of his career and 12 grandsons. He gave us his business card and said he would be our personal driver all weekend and all we needed to do was text him and he would come. Little did we know how literal he was and how lucky we were to have found him.

We watched a bit of television and called it a night after an extremely successful day of sightseeing and Great music. Three more days to go!