Friday afternoon Doug and I left Memphis and drove up to Nashville for an evening with David Sedaris at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. We both adore him, his audio books are one of the few things we can agree on listening to in the car on long trips. Doug was kind enough to drive up there so I could some knitting time in. I used it to finish up the Robin's Egg hat. Super quick knit really and its super cute.
We got to Nashville in enough time to check into the hotel (I use the term hotel loosely, it was more like a creepy motel) and take a quick nap for driving to TPAC. When we got to TPAC we found out he was signing books, which we hadn't known in advance. Davis Kidd bookstore was there selling copies of his books so we bought one and after standing in the wrong line for 5 minutes we found the correct line and it was so long we decided to wait until after he spoke to try to get the book signed. He was great, funny and sincere and just plain awesome. After the show we managed to get into the book signing line fairly quickly. We still had to wait about 30 minutes but I did get my book signed, although I couldn't think of anything witty to say to him.
It was past ten when we left TPAC but we were hungry so we walked over to a restaurant a Nashville friend had recommended and had a late night dinner there. I made the painful mistake of wearing shoes that really shouldn't be walked in/stood in for more than say two hours so by the time we were walking back to the parking garage I was seriously considering just taking off my shoes my feet hurt so bad. Lesson learned.
Saturday morning we woke up early so we could get out of that creepy motel and grab some coffee. We drove to what I believe is East Nashville and had coffee and muffins at a coffee shop called Ugly Mugs (no relation to the Memphis coffee company Ugly Mug). I had a delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip muffin and Doug had a blueberry muffin that was chock full of blueberries. 
While we were there we picked up a local food guide and saw an ad for the Nashville Farmer's Market. We had some time to kill and drove over there. I go to the Memphis Farmer's Market fairly often (although I haven't been in the last month but its only open on Saturdays from early May through early November. It's still fairly new but it's a great community service. The Nashville market is insane, it has a huge permanent location in downtown Nashville, its open seven days a week, year round, has a plant nursery, a flea market, an international grocery and a restaurant, it was amazing. I walked around with my mouth open because I couldn't believe how much stuff was there. Local produce everywhere, meats, fresh eggs, Mennonite baked goods, everything you could possibly imagine. I picked up a huge butternut squash, another kind of squash that I don't remember the name of, finger sized eggplants, apples, a pumpkin for the carving party this weekend and Doug had to have a package of country bacon. The pumpkins were my favorite part, there were huge boxes and wooden flats of so many different varieties of pumpkins, it was pumpkin nirvana and I wanted to take them all home. I hated to leave but I will be going back, it's worth the drive to get such produce, especially once the Memphis market closes for the season.
Saturday morning we woke up early so we could get out of that creepy motel and grab some coffee. We drove to what I believe is East Nashville and had coffee and muffins at a coffee shop called Ugly Mugs (no relation to the Memphis coffee company Ugly Mug). I had a delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip muffin and Doug had a blueberry muffin that was chock full of blueberries. 
While we were there we picked up a local food guide and saw an ad for the Nashville Farmer's Market. We had some time to kill and drove over there. I go to the Memphis Farmer's Market fairly often (although I haven't been in the last month but its only open on Saturdays from early May through early November. It's still fairly new but it's a great community service. The Nashville market is insane, it has a huge permanent location in downtown Nashville, its open seven days a week, year round, has a plant nursery, a flea market, an international grocery and a restaurant, it was amazing. I walked around with my mouth open because I couldn't believe how much stuff was there. Local produce everywhere, meats, fresh eggs, Mennonite baked goods, everything you could possibly imagine. I picked up a huge butternut squash, another kind of squash that I don't remember the name of, finger sized eggplants, apples, a pumpkin for the carving party this weekend and Doug had to have a package of country bacon. The pumpkins were my favorite part, there were huge boxes and wooden flats of so many different varieties of pumpkins, it was pumpkin nirvana and I wanted to take them all home. I hated to leave but I will be going back, it's worth the drive to get such produce, especially once the Memphis market closes for the season.Part of the Nashville Farmer's Market
We also spent some time walking around the Tennessee State Capitol, War Memorial Plaza and the Tennessee Supreme Court. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and the weather was just cool enough. We drove into Franklin which about 45 minutes outside of Nashville and had lunch at a little store/restaurant called the Henpeck Market. I had grilled pimento and cheese and Doug had grilled ham and cheese, both delicious. After lunch we drove past Franklin to Arrington Vineyards. It's a beautiful piece of land and they have daily wine tasting, which we wanted to do but because it was Saturday they were jam packed and we didn't want to spend hours waiting so we just bought a bottle of their Raspberry wine and hung out on the grounds for a little while before heading back to Memphis.
Tennessee State Capitol
Arrington Vineyards
We really couldn't have asked for a better weekend, it was wonderful and made it that much harder to head back to work this morning.
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