My little family and I recently took a family vacation to Nashville, Tennessee to see two of my siblings who live in the most darling city outside Nashville called Franklin. I can’t adequately express just how darling Franklin is, but when one evening we were all out in the yard, surrounded by brightly painted shuttered houses, running underneath blooming Magnolia trees, filling Mason jars with lightning bugs… let’s just say you can die of charm, and I was pretty close to flatlining. From what I gathered from being in the South, everyone we met and interacted with was so nice. So well mannered, kind and calm, a definite different pace than what I am used to, and I would move there in a second. I am no expert, so this post is definitely not a Tiny Tour, but wanted to share some of the fun things we encountered there!
1. Nashville Zoo: This zoo was smaller than our zoo in SLC, but had this Jurassic Park style dinosaur exhibit that was unreal! Our boys loved it and Hayes asked “Are we going to the zoo, or the jungle?” We were in awe of just how green Nashville is the whole time.
2. The Food: We ate some seriously incredible food while we were there, but our stand-outs were The Pharmacy, Pancake Pantry and Martin’s BBQ. The Pharmacy is a really popular bar style restaurant but they catered to children perfectly. I hate when restaurants take “kids menu” as a sign to stir up some Kraft Mac&Cheese and charge $6.00 for it, but the Pharmacy elevated what I have come to know as kids food. Everything we ate was delicious. Russ gets a burger pretty much everywhere we go, and has become a connoisseur of sorts. He said this burger was in his top 5, which probably means it was the best ever, but he will never heed to hype.
Pancake Pantry: I hope the last bite of food I have while on this Earth is Pancake Pantry’s Sweet Potato Pancakes. They top it with cinnamon sugar butter and they have caramel maple syrup on hand. Unreal! The kids were in Heaven, the line was long but moved quickly.
We had such a hard time deciding where to eat BBQ, there are a million options and we wanted to make it count! We went with Martin’s BBQ and it was delicious. It’s a definite meat fest, so probably not for everyone, but my picky boys ate their herb rubbed chicken wings and loved them so that’s a win!
3. Water Features: Lots of the home developments have HOA pools so we swam with my siblings and then also hit the Franklin YMCA which had slides, rock climbing walls over the deep end, fountains and more. The Cumberland Park Spraygrounds in downtown was awesome! Really anything to counteract the humidity is alright with me! This desert girl will take dry heat any day!
4. For Adults: We also hit up a couple thrift stores (it’s a Frame tradition) like the Hidden Treasure Chest, Music City Thrift, and of course the Honky Tonks on Broadway (sans kids) for bluegrass, rockabilly and country music.
All in all it was such a fun trip. Traveling with kids always adds a new dimension of stress, but we wouldn’t do it any other way! To my fellow Nashville-lovers, what would you add to this list? Leave it in the comments, and I’ll try not to be sad that we missed them all.
Have a wonderful weekend!!
xo
1 Comment
Brit
June 21, 2014 at 5:41 pmI am so glad you had a good time! We used to live in nashville and just moved back, and cannot believe all the great stuff there is to do, great food to eat, and great people to meet. It never ends. My recommendation is to check out east nashville next time and hit up 16th st bakery for a breakfast sandwich, ugly mugs for coffee, wild cow for vegetarian food, rose pepper for margaritas, and jenni’s for ridiculous ice cream! To name a few;) You are the second person today I heard rave about Cumberland splash park-I’ll definitely be bringing the kids there!