Day 4: Goodbye Ohio, Hello Nashville

Saturday morning, the three of us got up nice and early because we all love going to farmer’s markets and Caitlin wanted to show us her favorite Saturday morning market in Columbus. The morning was brisk and it was starting to feel like fall. We strolled around stalls of bright fall veggies as well as a large indoor market area similar to Eastern Market. Did you know watermelon came in not just pink but also yellow, gold, and red varieties? They even had sustainable Chilean Sea Bass for sale, though we were all a bit curious as to how it was guaranteed sustainable. We tried incredible lavender honey, lemon-infused olive oils, and homemade cheeses. We split a decadent liege waffle, which is a denser waffle made with dough closer to a pretzel dough than a fluffier Belgian waffle, and is known for its caramelized glazed crust (and its deliciousness). Can you tell Meredyth loves food and Ashley’s dad, being a chef, taught her well? Neither of us had tried these before and it definitely lived up to the hype.



At the market we gave out 4 postcards (we -yet again- unknowingly another non-English speaker – this time Polish!) and stocked up on some good snacks for the drive. Also an example of the kindness of Ohio residents: we had no idea that the market would validate parking but the attendant asked if we purchased anything and gave us a discount anyway just to be nice.

Columbus was so much fun – a great time with Caitlin and Mike who were wonderful hosts and a city with much more to do than we even expected! Can’t wait to get their post cards in the mail :).

And on to Nashville we ventured. A few miles away from the Ohio/ Kentucky border, the topography began to change from flat to hilly. It is amazing how drastic the change was almost immediately after we left the state! Another (welcome) change was higher speed limits – gotta love driving in 70 mph zones! We gave out a post card in Kentucky even though we didn’t visit there (we are learning a lot about geography on this trip given that neither of us even realized that we were going through Kentucky on the way).

Some general driving observations:

1. We have listened to quite a bit of music thus far on the trip, as you might expect. We’ve noticed that rappers like to give a shout out to themselves in their songs, so often when we like a song on the radio, its unnecessary to look up who sings it, because the answer will invariably be revealed in the song itself.

2. We were curious if some states had multiple time zones – although we have not confirmed this, according to my phone, it seems as though our question was answered with Kentucky which we believe had two and we are pretty sure there are more states like this.

3. We also passed “Cave City” in Kentucky (“An adventure of a lifetime!”) which has, among other attractions, a go cart track, a “shoot em up” type of old time gun show, horseback riding, a dinosaur park/museum (we got to see a life size T-rex from the side of the road), a roller rink, and a world renowned pet grooming facility (?!). We think it might have been a terrible decision not to have stopped for the afternoon at this gem.

4. We also passed the national Corvette Museum and the “Most Awesome Flea Market In The World” (as the football field-sized sign that we could see from the highway proclaimed). Under the sign for the flea market, white shrubs were groomed to say “Thank You God”, which you could also see from the highway.

We arrived in Nashville around 3pm (thank you one hour time change) and got to Ashley’s friend Declan’s place. Declan is doing Teach for America and went to UVA with us. He lives with two other TFA teachers, one of whom is also a UVA alum. They were so kind to let us crash and hang out with them. First on the agenda was getting a new computer charger for Ashley’s Mac because it hadn’t been working well. We went to the Apple store at the Nashville mall and within 30 minutes, Ashley successfully got a new, FREE, computer charger (thanks Mom for teaching me how to get free stuff!). This is why I love apple – amazing customer service and great help. While Ashley was at the genius bar getting her charger sorted out, Meredyth slyly put our blog up on all the open computers…

Next stop was Centennial Park, which is has a full size replica of the Greek Parthenon, the temple to Athena. We had lots of fun walking around it and gave away a few postcards. There was live music in the park – we lounged on the grass listening for a while, tried some incredible lavender and rosemary lemonade (can you tell Ashley loves lavender?), and people-watched. We spoke to one of the performers who had played earlier in the day, and he gave us a free CD. (We later listened to it and it was really good – his name is Joseph Lemar – look him up!) We gave him a postcard and he really liked the idea and gave us a second CD to give out to the next person we gave a postcard to! We told him we’d wait until we were in a different city so we’re planning to give it out in Austin. It was funny because he and another person we had given a postcard to earlier in the day both asked if we were eventually going to write a book about the postcards we received. We thought it was interesting that people in an artsy city like Nashville (where everyone is trying to make a name for themselves) would ask that.

Ashley's cartwheel by the Parthenon.

We went back to Declan’s and met up with his roommates and his friend Ben and we all went out to this awesome restaurant called City House for dinner. It is this hip, chic converted house with exposed brick, white walls, and high ceilings. Ashley and Meredyth shared some amazing lima bean and tomato pizza and bread gnocchi. Afterwards we went out to the semi-touristy downtown area of Nashville seeking some live honky tonk – we were not let down. There were people of all ages out until 2 am (seriously, hoards of old ladies were staying out later than we did) wearing all sorts of outfits and there was a live band at literally every bar on the street. The people-watching was spectacular. There were approximately 13 zillion bachelorette parties at this dive bar called Paradise (the name may clue you into what an experience it was). We started realizing how tired we were and by the time we went to bed, we figured out that we had been up for 21 hours packing everything we could into the day. But it was well worth it.

Miles to go: 3,125

Total Post Cards Given Out: 33

Post Cards Received: 0

States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN