In December, we took took a weekend getaway to Nashville to see a totally new-to-us city. Check out this recap to see where we ate, drank and shopped during our three-day visit.
After talking about it for months, I’m finally sharing with you a glimpse at our Nashville trip!
We took so many photos and video that it’s taken us a while to get them organized. And then a while turned into almost six months — oops!
Last fall, Chris and I were itching to get out of town together after a lot of time apart, so we booked a long weekend getaway to Nashville, Tenn. in December.
We considered a few cities, but Nashville stood out because neither of us had been there before, so we could explore it together for the first time.
We picked most of the places we visited based on recommendations from friends, which is my favorite way to travel. Yelp is great, but humans you trust are way better!
(It feels a little silly to be sharing photos with Christmas decor in them — but the recommendations ring true!)
We flew to Nashville from Charlotte on a Saturday morning.
As my friend Kim pointed out to me, it’s only an hour-or-so flight from here, and it’s the next time zone over, so when you arrive it’s like you haven’t lost more than 30 minutes and it’s easy to get exploring straight away.
YES. I am all about that time jump.
After dropping our stuff off at the cutest Airbnb in East Nashville (another friend’s reco), we grabbed a quick coffee & snack at nearby Sweet 16th Bakery (yesss to brookies!).
Then we hopped in a rideshare and jetted off to the 12 South neighborhood to start our exploring.
I’d always wanted to shop in White’s Mercantile for its local artisan gifts, and I knew that this area had tons of gorgeous murals, too.
It was great to see some of these places I’ve always seen on Instagram in person!
For lunch, we picked Burger Up on a whim and did not regret it. When our server learned we were from out of town, she handed us an illustrated Xerox of their staff’s favorite haunts.
We loved having this list to reference, and it made picking restaurants really easy. I always trust people in the restaurant industry! They always know the best spots.
After lunch, we headed to the fairgrounds and spent the rest of the day at Porter Flea. A recommendation from my coworker, this is a quarterly market for makers of all kinds.
Shopping at Porter Flea was really amazing. It reminded me a lot of Charlotte’s VTGCLT, which is a local pop-up market I love here!
We even ran into our Charlotte friends from Geoflora Jewelry! (I featured twins Margaret and Ellen Hinrichs in my Dream Jobs column a couple years ago!)
Our trip was a few weeks before the Christmas holidays, which was great so we could fit in a bit more shopping.
We picked up a few treats for ourselves, too! (Posters from Methane Studios for our living room and earrings for me from Hechizo.)
For dinner, we grabbed tacos near our Airbnb at The Rosepepper, then chased them with the salted peanut butter ice cream of my dreams at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams.
On Sunday morning,
we started out the day with donuts and coffee from Five Daughter’s Bakery. SUCH a good choice!
We also checked out Welcome Home next door, which turned out to be a lovely little gift shop. More presents! I always try to pick up a Christmas ornament on all my significant trips, and found the cutest one here.
We decided to walk to the Five Points area from there. For lunch, we grabbed a couple slices of pizza on our walk (I honestly cannot remember where we found it!)
In Five Points, we did some shopping at the adorable Gift Horse, the stationery shop of my dreams. (I have a lot of dreams, okay?)
Then we grabbed a box of WithCo Cocktails mixers at their HQ. We had sampled their drinks the night before at Porter Flea, and I so wanted to be able to take them back with us!
We decided we were ready for a drink and some bowling, so to continue on our quest of fun recommendations, we headed to Pinewood Social. (Another place I’ve seen on Instagram a thousand times, but wanted to experience for myself!)
Chris and I are both mediocre bowlers, at best, so we had a lot of laughs. If I lived in Nashville, I’d love hanging out with friends at this spot. And the cocktails were superb!
Next we grabbed drinks and truffle fries at L.A. Jackson in The Gulch. It’s a rooftop bar at the top of the Thompson Hotel.
The cocktails were a little pricy, but the view was so worth it!
Next we hit up Bastion, which was by far my favorite cocktail spot of the trip. I’d hang out here every weekend.
We got to play each other in PAC-MAN while sipping on old-fashioneds, which was just a delight.
For dinner, we enjoyed burgers at The Pharmacy before walking back to our Airbnb. This place felt like a German beer garden with a unique soda shop kind of vibe.
On Monday, our last day, we had limited time before getting to the airport and wanted to see a few things before we left.
We so far hadn’t felt very touristy this trip, but Chris wanted to check out Broadway Street so we headed into downtown.
First we grabbed lunch at the notorious Hattie B’s for Nashville style hot chicken. It’s something we both had always wanted to try, and this place did not disappoint. When we got there, there was a line out the door but we only had to wait about 20 minutes to be seated.
Broadway Street was something else. I loved seeing the cowboy boot shops, old country music nightclubs and neon signs.
We couldn’t leave without grabbing a couple GooGoo Clusters for the plane ride home!
I definitely can’t wait to visit Nashville again. There is a lot to do here, and I definitely need at least a week more to see it all.
A note for next time: We will definitely rent a car. We ended up walking and taking rideshares most everywhere, but renting a car would have probably cost about the same or cheaper.
Next time we’ll make time to visit some of the more touristy things too, like the Grand Ole Opry and the Opryland Resort.
I realize we probably missed out seeing it decked out for the holidays (I heard it’s amazing), but we just didn’t have time to do it all!
There were tons more places we wanted to see, but didn’t have time. Thank goodness it’s only a quick plane ride away!
Guess we should plan another weekend getaway to Nashville one day soon… // susannah
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