Beneath the Brim

What is most interesting about Nashville is not the hat-wearing-boot-scooting cowboys or even the music they play. It's all the things that lie beneath the stereotype that make Nashville more than just a hicksville city.

Like the fact that in Centennial Park, there sits a giant replica of the Greek Parthenon. Giant. And it's surrounded by the lush green grounds of the park where ducks wonder between the fountains.

Or at The Frayed Knot - the local bar for the Vanderbilt collegiates - they actually play beer pong, on tables designed and designated strictly for beer pong. And dressed in their deck shoes with the sleeves rolled up on their salmon pink Ralph Lauren shirts, they get very drunk trying to prove their masculinity by bouncing a ping pong ball into a slightly-full cup of beer.

Or how the music is not strictly knee-slapping-swing-ya-girl-round country tunes. The live music (of which there is plenty to choose from) is a hybrid mix of country, pop, jazz, soul and even hip hop - a rapper beatboxing with a violin is quite a scene to behold. Even my hostel, AAE Music City, is overflowing with talent. A piano sits in the lounge room where people lay down honky tonk tunes when the feeling suits them, or each pick up a guitar to play the Dueling Banjos or their latest musical creation.

That's what makes this city Nashville.

Ciao for now. xo