Teaching Taylor

My two friends and I discussed a girls trip one night randomly and a few short months later we were headed to the airport to fly to Nashville.

Crazy thing is.. the three of us hadn’t even known each other for a full year at the time, but we booked the trip anyway. My sweet friends, Alyssa, Hailley and I met through our church and got together almost weekly at small group. We quickly bonded over our faith and our fun personalities. I have to say fun personalities because I think we’re a riot together. The reason why I share that is because our trip to Nashville was filled with literally so many laughs. Which was the first ingredient to a successful girls trip!

We flew into town on a Sunday and immediately set foot to explore the town. Our Airbnb was within walking distance of Broadway so we hit the sidewalks for a fun quick tour of the town. Hailley and I had visited Nashville before, but it was Alyssa’s first time exploring country music city.

Our first stop was to Assembly Food Hall. This place is a foodie’s dream. The food options were endless and so were the treat and drink options. We all treated ourselves to a coffee from Donut Distillery and I highly recommend stopping there for a caffeinated beverage to get you through the travel day or any day exploring the town.

We started our first full day in Nashville with a photoshoot. My friend Alyssa is a photographer and brought her camera along because she had an engagement shoot while we were there. I never did a friend photoshoot before and it was literally so much fun. We laughed so dang much throughout the time we were snapping pictures and the end result are the photos I share throughout this blog. I am seriously so grateful for a talented friend who captured my personality to a T. (If you need a photographer, Alyssa Ashley Photography is your girl!)

We explored The Gulch and 12 South after that. These locations in Nashville are full of murals, shops, coffee shops, and fun places to eat. You can spend as little or as much time as you’d like at either location, which makes it an amazing place to stop while visiting. We ate lunch at Bartaco and I had the best street tacos I have ever had from their scratch kitchen. I ordered the Squash Blossom Taco to be adventurous and it was the BEST. Highly recommend (let’s see how many times I say that phrase in this post?)

Tuesday was Carrie Underwood day. I literally could not even handle the fact that I was going to see Carrie at The Opry. I can’t let my excitement for this event cover up the fact that we went to the cutest lunch spot called, Sixty Vines. I had a delicious steak meal and an amazing chocolate cake dessert called Deviled Affogato (stay tuned, I am going to try to recreate this because I’ve been dreaming of it since!) This dessert is a chocolate cake with ice cream and caramel sauce and before eating you pour a shot of coffee on top. Can it get any better than that? We had a blast getting ready together before we headed to The Opry. Carrie Underwood was AMAZING… obviously. Need I say more about that?

A hidden gem on our trip was the Pontoon Saloon. This was recommended to us by our Uber driver, Adam. (Shout out, Adam Laverdiere, he’s a musician who has great tunes on Apple Music so you should probably check his music out) This was a two hour pontoon cruise at sunset and we had SO MUCH FUN. This is a must do when in Nashville. It was such a chill way to spend our last night there. After the ride, we hustled to Ole Smoky Distillery, where Bailey Zimmerman was playing. This was just a short walk from our Airbnb. If you haven’t seen him live, add him to your concert list. This guy can sing and perform. My country music loving heart was so happy we did not miss him. After our free concert, we ended our last night having margaritas at Pushing Daisies. An underground speak easy with divine beverages.

We did so much more on our trip, but these were just the highlights. We laughed so dang much and I will be forever grateful for this experience with these two ladies. God is so good and I am so glad he placed these ladies in my life when he did.

All of this to say, if you’re considering the trip, TAKE IT. Bring the cute outfits, try the fun food, drink the unique drinks, explore, see all the beauty in this world. At the end of the day, this world has so much to offer, we just need to be brave enough to go explore it.

Thanks for reading until the end, I appreciate you and I’m so glad you took the time.