What do you get when you combine country music, excellent BBQ, and 10,000 dietitians? A really intense weekend in Nashville for the annual Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics conference, aka FNCE. Last weekend I went down there with Alice for a 4-day expo, listening to nutrition lectures and also stuffing ourselves on free food and filling our bags with goodies to bring back.
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| Our first morning, as cloudy and cool as it was, I managed to get Alice to go for a lovely jog with me down this awesomely sketchy "greenway". I bet she was happy she got out of bed at 6am for that experience! |
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| The Cumberland River was just by our hostel in downtown Nashville |
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| Music City is electrifying, even under gray skies |
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| People were hitting the bars, even in the morning. In this city, music is 24/7! |
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| The Ryman! |
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| An old fashioned peanut shop :o) |
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| It was convenient to have the conference formally begin in the afternoon. That allowed us time to do some sightseeing, which included a stop in the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame. Here is Elvis's "Solid Gold" Cadillac and gold piano. |
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| The opening of FNCE |
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| The first Saturday of every month is the Nashville Art Crawl. Each location has art, wine, and cheese. A dangerous concoction! |
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| One stop on the Art Crawl interestingly was the old Presbyterian Church. They actually have their own artist in residence and the children decorated their fellowship hall with instruments made with 'found objects,' like cigar boxes :P |
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| The architecture of the Presbyterian Church was in Egyptian Revival, which is a little different... |
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| Pop-up art mobile! |
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| The most bustling site on the art crawl was the old Arcade. The top floor was all galleries! Notice a certain King making the rounds? |
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| I thought I'd only see one of these in Vegas |
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| Almost every restaurant and bar had live music spilling into the streets |
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| Somehow Alice and I managed to find a table at the popular restaurant, Puckett's, despite the 3 hour wait list. Either we looked hungry or no one else wanted to sit right beside the stage! |
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| The food was pretty darn good |
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| Even our hostel had a singer-songwriter night. |
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| The next morning I took a nice early morning tour of Centennial Park and the Parthenon. It was pretty sketchy here, too. |
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| Now the fog and humidity set in :o( The temps were on the rise! |
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| At FNCE there were over 300 vendors, each with some food item to give away! |
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| Chobani
pulled out all the stops (I must have had 4 yogurts each day, plus
their little chefs' creations!), and I quickly became familiar with the
iced coffee guy. |
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| Kellogg's had a creative cereal bar |
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| We took over Music City Center |
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| That night Alice and I came in last place at Trivia at the bar next to the hostel. |
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| Getting ready for another sketchy early morning jog. |
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| On our last evening Alice and I did some musical bar hopping, but the first stop was a nice long wait for Jack's BBQ. It was a good time to digest all those conference samples. |
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| Yeah, the food was worth the effort! |
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| We walked along Broadway to scope out the pubs. Tootsies was for the young folk |
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| Layla's was more my style |
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| Jogging around the capitol |
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| On our last day, as we were about to head to the airport, there was a Walk of Fame induction ceremony. Johnny Cash was going to have his star placed, finally! |
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| I wish I had brought a bigger bag! |
