Christmas in Nashville 2021

We decided to spend Christmas in Nashville and boy did we have a blast.  Come listen to our adventures and listen in as we highlight some of the fun places we visited, we have a bunch of tips and ideas for your next trip to Nashville TN.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi friends welcome back to RView today we have a great show for you all about our trip to Nashville at Christmas time, the beautiful lights and all our tips and tricks, so stay tuned.

intro
Welcome to RView with your hosts George and Lisa Hernandez each week listening as Jordan Lisa talk about their RV and travel adventures all around the world. Georgia and Lisa travel in their 40 foot Class A Tiffin motorcoach and tow their Jeep Wrangler, always looking for fun and adventure.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, Friends, welcome back to RView, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your families. We’ve got a great show for you today about our trip to Nashville, Tennessee that we spent over the Christmas holiday. And many of you may think why did they go to Nashville on Christmas Day when they’ve got all these kids. And so just to kind of tell you a little bit about our Christmas, a few years ago, I decided that I wanted all my kids at home with me for Christmas. That’s the most important thing to me. And as the kids continue to get older Mandy the oldest she’s like 33. And she’s got nine year old twins, between seeing our grandkids and then and then our oldest having you know different boyfriends and girlfriends and wanting to go with their families at the holidays, I decided that our family Christmas will always be the Saturday before Christmas. So every year whether whatever day Christmas shall fall on, it’ll be the Saturday before and if it’s on a Saturday, it’ll be the Saturday before that. So this year, Christmas fell on a Saturday. So Christmas was a whole week early at our house celebrated on December 18. And it’s my one of my favorite days of the year because all the kids come home and the grandkids and we open up gifts together and have a nice dinner and play games. And so that’s Mommy’s Christmas, Manitoba, and then it’s over. And so then George and I get to do whatever we want for Christmas Day and Christmas Eve because all the kids kind of have their own things to do. And

George
that’s what I mean by it’s it’s over. I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean that we take all the pressure off of the kids. What’s happened in the past is we’ll plan Christmas dinner. This was when we celebrated on actual Christmas and the kids have uncles and aunts and girlfriend’s parents and a bunch of different places to go. And yeah, so it started becoming a nightmare of scheduling. So that’s when Lisa decided, let’s just do this that the Saturday before Christmas, whatever it falls on. And it’s we’ve done it two, three years now. Yeah, I think this is our third year. Yeah. And it worked out great. And even the kids are used to it now. And they can plan their days

Lisa RichartHernandez
out their Christmas, actual Christmas Day is just so much more relaxed, like the girls have to go to their dad’s house and their dad also lives in the same town as us. So you know, sort of half the morning here and half who’s gonna make breakfast and who’s gonna go to dinner and you know, I started to get to be the Grinch and not even want to put a Christmas tree up because, you know, or even make a meal because the half the kids had eaten somewhere else when they finally got to my house. And it just seemed like a big waste of time. And everyone was stressed out over it. And I didn’t want to put that on to them. So

George
no, and it’s worked out. Fantastic. So we all love it. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
George and I every year try to figure out okay, what are we going to do for our Christmas? And after a little bit of research? I said, Hey, there’s a spot at the kyoei in Nashville available over Christmas weekend. Why don’t we go check it out. And they have a bunch of different Christmas shows and live music and stuff. So he said What the heck and hit the road. Right. That’s it. Yeah, get up. Yeah. So for those of you that are following along, my mom is still in the hospital. She’s in the rehab facility now. And we were hoping she was going to get out before Christmas, but she didn’t. So when she said she was in there, we decided hey, we don’t need to be here to take a look out for her. So let’s Oh, it

George
was an opportunity we we seldom are alone or have alone time is the two unless we make it and like we said we already celebrated Christmas Lisa’s mom, unfortunately was not getting out of the hospital anytime soon. So we were like okay, let’s just let’s go. Let’s Let’s pack up the RV and head up to Nashville. And I’m glad we did we had such a great time. And so sit back and listen and we’ll tell you all about it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So let’s see. Well firstly, I was happy to add down to Hilton Head to go pick up the coach and so we we spent one night there and then left it I don’t know what time do we end up getting on the road in the morning from hell? had was it? Nine o’clock, 10 o’clock, it was about nine o’clock. We didn’t do well. We set the alarm to wake up real early and then just decided, let’s wait till the traffic dies down, which really wasn’t bad traffic.

George
Well, you say that but we were delayed two hours in our trip because of traffic. Well, that was around Atlanta. Yeah, Atlanta no matter what time of the day it is. There’s always traffic. So if you’re ever traveling or going to drive through Atlanta, just be prepared. So it took us a little bit longer than we expected. But we were in no rush. We had no real rush to get there. But it should have been a nine hour drive and it ended up being 11 and a half hours. So that was pretty exhausting for me. Yeah. Long

Lisa RichartHernandez
driving day for George. And so we got there. got hooked up. Did we go out to dinner that first night?

George
Not we arrived late and hooked up, showered and headed over to the Gaylord just to check it out. Because we were like, you know, yeah, we might as well go and check it out and see if it’s something that we want to come back to.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So we went to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which is literally, maybe two miles, two miles from the car. Yeah, yeah, too far to walk but

George
close enough to

Lisa RichartHernandez
not close enough probably to ride your bike. Maybe you could ride your bike there. But realistically, the smartest thing to do and this is a pro tip here, Uber, Uber, Uber. We the first thing, we did Uber there and we thought, okay, well, we’re gonna check it out. Maybe we’ll go have some cocktails wander around, grab an appetizer or something. So we arrive and I mean, the lights there, just the Christmas lights are just beautiful. There’s a gigantic Christmas tree, outside and a whole actual nativity scene. The story of the birth of Jesus Christ was being like, played, which all of that was very interesting to me to actually see the spirit of Christmas actually being displayed at an you know, with all of our political correctness now, it was just kind of refreshing to see like, yeah, that is the reason we celebrate Christmas is because it’s supposed to be about the birth of Jesus. Right, right. Not Santa Claus. So so that was really beautiful. And they have horse and carriage rides that you can take around there. And we didn’t do it, but they looked they were like the white Cinderella kind of horse and carriage. Yeah, it was really cool. Nice and beautiful. Like just the tree lights. I don’t even know how they got all those lights up there.

George
I said to Lisa the the maintenance crew that they must have her this place just just just for the the Christmas decorations. Oh my god. It was just like

Lisa RichartHernandez
100 people decorating full time for weeks. I mean, it’s insane. Yeah, stuff they have. It’s really really but

George
they did a beautiful job. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So we got into, we got to go inside. And we found out later that maybe you have to be a guest staying there. And I don’t know if that’s a COVID thing or not. So I really am not 100% sure on that. But we had no problem getting in. We just walked right in. I think it’s after a certain hour. Okay, maybe. But when we went in it was it was even more beautiful on the inside than it was on the outside. Believe it or not, they have over nine acres of covered. It’s like almost like a glass like atrium, sort of,

George
I guess. a greenhouse.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it’s like you’re inside but it almost looks like you’re outside. There’s so many plants and trees and there’s a river. You can actually take a riverboat ride. There’s waterfalls, there’s just all kinds of like a rain forest vegetation. There’s things for the kids to do. There’s a water fountain that does like displayed in music that’s lighted up.

George
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a massive place and it’s broken up into three different areas. And I’m still not sure if we saw all three Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
sure. There’s definitely a large water park that we did not see. That looked like it was really really nice. And it goes inside and outside. So I guess think of like a Great Wolf Lodge meets the Bellagio and Paris in Vegas like a gigantic Yeah, it’s it’s very dizzy, very Vegas, gigantic place just really beautifully decorated. Probably five or six different restaurants in there. So we walk in, we’re like, well, let’s just grab a cocktail because we’re gonna walk around. And yeah, so we get I got a vodka. We’ll have water George Scott McCarty and cardi coke. And it was $20. So $14 drinks and they were like those little tiny plastic cups. So I get you’re paying for you know where you’re at or whatever. But I felt like for not even a specialty cocktail. That was a pretty steep price for a drink to walk around. So we decided to sell one drink there and just kind of pay attention, see the lights and yeah, we got any food or anything?

George
I think they I overheard a lot of people making the same comment specifically one lady looked at her husband and when he told you the price of the beer, he said, This is not the place to come to have a beer. He said we’re gonna come here to have a beer. This is not the

Lisa RichartHernandez
right. Yeah. So we ended up actually hoovering back across the street over to the scoreboard, which is turns out to be just like one of our favorite little like, off the beaten path. And I say little, but it’s actually a really big restaurant and bar. Yeah. Um, and it’s right, right by the Gaylord Opryland hotel, and by the campgrounds, the kyoei. And so we went there, we had learned about this place by accident the last time we were there, and just knew that they had decent food and they were close, and we didn’t want to go stray too far the first night and they’re alive

George
musics always great. Yeah, they have music.

Lisa RichartHernandez
seven nights a week. They have live music seven nights a week. Yeah. I so I decided to get the wimpy hot chicken sandwich. Because last time I went there, I got like a medium hot chicken sandwich. I was gonna call the sissy. Yeah, like my like, so well the time I got the medium My lips were so um, fart like, I couldn’t even like eat the sandwich because it was so hot. And it was like I don’t even know what like insanely up, you know, as compared to what the medium was. So I said, alright, well, I don’t want some spicy, but I love the flavor of the hot Nashville hot chicken sandwich. I’m going to get the sissy kind. Well, I got the sissy would even that was an IE, I mean, I know hot food is all relative. So like, I can eat some hot wings. You know, like, I eat hot wings.

George
And hot sauce they use is not Oh, no, but it’s so good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s like the kind of hot where you eat it and you’re like, spurting my mouth. But give me another bite. You know?

George
Yeah. But it’s it just doesn’t go away. Yeah, it’s like they use pepper spray from a police container.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t even know what it is. It’s so good. Nashville hot chicken. So I’ve been pepper

George
sprayed. And that shit is hot. But that chick? Ha

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. I know. So if you like hot hot chicken sandwich and you want to try to get away. And I think that the scoreboard is pretty good place to try it out. They also have these drinks called bushwhackers, which are basically like frozen ice cream drinks that they make all different flavors of it’s made with some kind of dark rum. Those are also really delicious. None of these things are on my diet. I think I actually might have done good for a few days of our trip to Nashville to the diet. But I

George
think you did great the whole time.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We were off the rails a few times. But

George
it was more drinking off the rails than eating. And for those of you who don’t

Lisa RichartHernandez
know, I started eating diet. About eight to while I started. It was the eight week thing. So it was like basically the holidays, no November, December. And I lost 20 pounds so far. And I’m looking forward to starting the next thing and it works really great. And it’s called eager to motivate and it’s on Facebook. So I was really excited about just the program and I’ve been trying to stick to it. So when I make diet references, you’ll know what I mean. But on the EasyWeb diet, there’s no sugar, no carbs, and no dairy for basically for about eight weeks. So

George
I’m not very supportive. I need to be a little more supportive because I could shed a couple pounds but it’s hard to Nashville. Let’s just food and drink everywhere. Yeah, yeah. So that was our first day. Then we went back to the RV and just chilled out because we had a long drive that day. Right. Then the next day, which was Thursday, we went downtown to Jason Aldean bar.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, yeah, we hit the ground running very first.

George
Yeah. And it was it was really nice, because it wasn’t so packed. When that Wednesday.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was like the few days before Christmas. And I think that a lot of people had already started going on vacation. And like, you know, tourists hadn’t been coming in yet. And people hadn’t been going out yet. So I felt fortunate that it wasn’t like, I mean, it was like, there was it was busy, but it wasn’t packed. And we easily got a seat at the bar. And so Jason all Dean’s is like a three or four storey restaurant. So you walk the floors, three floors. So you walk up the first floor. And there’s a bar there and a stage. And that section has different food than the rooftop. And we kept seeing, so we sat at the bar there, because that was the first place we saw. And we’re listening to the band. And they were really good. And we had great service sitting at the bar. Yeah. Very good. And, you know, whenever I go into any kind of place that’s like, you know, on Broadway or whatever, I kind of have low expectations of the food because I figure tourist trap. Right.

George
Right. And or fast food.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And I was I was really pleasantly surprised.

George
We were very surprised. You had that salad that you really, they

Lisa RichartHernandez
had a house salad? Well, actually, I hadn’t. I didn’t have Nashville hot chicken sandwich the night before. I must have eaten something out. I think I ate a salad or something. But I ate another salad there. And it was the house salad. And it was like the best salad I ever had. It had. Of course, it had like blue cheese crumbles in it or something. And cucumbers and yeah, I mean, it was really really good. I know what it was. But it was like a chop salad or something. It was just a side salad. And I did the hot chicken sandwich there. Which was good. And not too too hot. Like the scoreboard. Chicken Sandwich.

George
Yeah, so and I had the chicken and waffles with I was incredible. Yeah. Now I will say the waffles were some of the best waffles I’ve ever had in my life. Chicken was a little bit dry. But the next time I had it, it was much better. It was just probably a bad portion that I got the first day. But it was still delicious. Don’t get me wrong. It was so good.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So we started there with cocktails. And at least we said, this is early in the day. Oh, we need to eat food. We’re not just having a BS. Let’s get a bass. You know, we’ll be drinking a lot.

George
We sat. So we sat downstairs and we kept seeing everybody going upstairs and we’re like, you know, I guess after we ate and we listened to the band for a little bit then we were like, I guess we should go upstairs and see what’s going on up there. Dang it. We should have gone up first. Because it was way more lively upstairs. The band was much better. And then upstairs was different.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, we but they only had like basket food like, which also looked really good. But it was like cheeseburger basket. I think they had like a hot wire fighters like more casual, more casual type food. So definitely maybe something to try next time. But like I was trying to eat a little bit on the healthier side. Yeah.

George
And then upstairs, they had a outdoor patio. That was really beautiful. It just overlooked the whole Broadway. So you can see all the bars and all the people and they did a really really nice job with that bar. I was I was a restaurant. I was impressed.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, i i That’s a great place to go up and get a picture. You can stand on the patio and see all the way down, up and down Broadway. Yeah, you can see. And they have great bands up there too. Every time we were up there. They had really good. One of the musicians has like a top 40 Hit that we listen to. There’s no cover charge or anything to get in. He was really good. I forget his name.

George
I’ve got it somewhere in the notes. I’ll find that in a minute. And I’m gonna post all this on on our notes for our podcast. So don’t panic people. I got your back. So then from there, we went to Dirk Bentley’s bar. You remember that? Yeah, I mean, you’re gonna hear me ask that. A lot of

Lisa RichartHernandez
remember that. I remember going to all the bars. It’s just that each different night that we were there. There were so many different good musicians that I caught. We kind of got into the habit of just sort of walking down the street and going like, this sounds good. Let’s go in here.

George
Yeah, that was my favorite part. Just walking around. And it didn’t matter for the dark dingy bar or Jason Aldean. His brand new place or whatever the music was, what was the catcher for me? And every bar we walked past had just incredible musicians. And, you know, and any one of those people could break out tomorrow, you know, and then you’re like, oh, man, I remember I saw them in Nashville.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

George
So we did that. We went to dirt. Bentley’s walked around, had some cocktails. The one thing that I will say that I put in my notes to remind myself parking. Downtown Nashville is extremely expensive. Oh,

Lisa RichartHernandez
that’s right. Yeah. So So

George
I would highly recommend unless you’re really really far away from Nashville is to Uber. Oh 100. Our Uber was a third of what it would have cost us to park for two hours.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So it was about a $15 override from the kyoei to downtown which is about 1520 minute drive. We decided to drive down on Thursday because I wanted to see Maybe I want to do a little shopping or whatever. And we were having dinner with Melanie nationally that night. And so I thought, well, worst case, we’ll just come home later and drop off the car. When we went to go to the parking thing, it was $45 to park for. I think it was three hours.

George
Yes, it was for three hours was $40. Yeah. And they get you because they say, oh, parking $15. So you’re like, Oh, perfect. And when you go park $15 buys you the first two hours. And then it’s 40 for, you know, second, the next two hours, and then it just climbs up I think at 60 or 70, then you’re covered for the night. But that’s still a lot a lot

Lisa RichartHernandez
way more than getting an Uber from most places.

George
Right? If we, for example, if we would have left the car there overnight would have been, let’s say $80. Our whole Uber tab for the week was $115. So we would have blown our budget almost in one day of parking. Yeah. Pro tip there.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yep, definitely. So we ended up driving back to the, to the RV Resort. And then Uber going back downtown for dinner.

George
Yeah. And we went to the Hampton social downtown across from the football stadium. That’s where we met Ashley. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
that’s where we met Melanie, nationally and their daughters for dinner right before Christmas and had a great meal. They have everything on that menu kind of like, from sort of woodfire flatbread pizzas to tacos to, I guess,

George
yeah, it was it was it was great. And all the food was really good. And they’re there. They’re two blocks off abroad. So Broadway is the main road. Obviously, that’s where all the bars are. That’s where all the action is. But if you go off Broadway, a couple blocks, there’s a bunch of great restaurants and bars. So IE, this bar that we went to that the Hampton social was two blocks off Broadway, fantastic place, don’t miss it. And if you happen to go there, and you sit at the bar, make sure you ask for Josh. He was a fantastic bartender. And he asked us if we wanted to try a drink that he hadn’t created. And who are we to pass up a free drink? What was the drink that he created was called the Josh. Remember, it was a strawberry. It tasted like a strawberry popsicle. Okay, it was really creamy. It was it was actually he nailed it because I love those Strawberry Shortcake ice creams. Yeah, and it tastes just like that. So go see Josh, Tom, George and Lisa sent you. And Tom, you want to try the strawberry popsicle that he created. So then after that, what did we do? We went to the Kid Rock bar. And I will say that we almost ended up at kid rocks bar, probably every night. I personally think the best music that we heard was that kid rocks. The bands were great. And they offered more of a variety of music. Not just countries. Just country they played rock they played this go they played everything where every every other bars kind of country is their thing. Well, Kid rocks is

Lisa RichartHernandez
like right on the corner and like the band is elevated over the dance floor. So like everyone can see them. And then the windows are like wide open. So they have really good marketing do because you can hear the band from outside. It seems like a really happening play. Yeah.

George
That is very smart of them. They have two speakers facing out. And I mean, that’s all you hear is the music from Kid rocks place and it is oh is jam packed. So what did we do after that after crit we had at home? That was it. We were done for day two.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. But it was still a pretty late night because we had gone out all afternoon and listened to music.

George
And that day we were ready for some day drinking and night drinking. So Thursday. Yeah, we stayed out. Way too late. Yeah, actually, now that I think about it, we stayed up way too late. Because Friday. We slept in and nursed the hangover. Yeah. Because we had the Oak Ridge Boys that

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, because Friday was Christmas Eve, right? Yes. So it was Christmas Eve was a little bit of a weird day because things were like some open some clothes closing early. Yeah. We didn’t really do anything that day. We just kind of got ready to go to the show that night. We got there a little bit early. Oh, we went shopping at the mall. Yeah.

George
I messed up and I thought I packed an outfit but I didn’t. And I ended up getting a new outfit from Lisa. So maybe or maybe I didn’t know what I had. But Lisa bought me a beautiful new outfit and put it on and we went to the Oak Ridge Boys. Christmas. What was the actual name? It was just the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay. Oak Ridge Boys Christmas dinner show? Yeah. I mean, I guess they’ve been doing this for like 30 some years.

George
Yeah, something like that. And um, so you heard it in Title dinner show. So our expectations of the food. Were not at all we were like, okay, whatever. It’s it’s a show and they’re given us food. So let’s just go with it. Tickets were like $99 a person. It was $99 a person. There was 100 tables with 1010 people per table. So 1000 people were there. It was jam packed. And the food was actually very good. I have to give them kudos. It was right on time that got us fed. And then the show started. And so kudos to

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, the Gaylord Opryland. That must have been like, so the dinner was like, the soup was sort of a creamy mushroom soup, but it had a puff pastry, like on top of the thing almost like been, like baked on there. So it was really creamy soup. And then for dinner, it was a chicken breast. Mashed potato, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and some green beans and some stuffing, but they’re all very well prepared. And we’re kind of food snobs, I would say. So I was pleasantly surprised by that food. And then for dessert. There was a some kind of delicious like chocolate knows, like it was a mess. It was in a little, almost like a jar kind of like cherries and chocolate mousse. I was ready, I could have finished all my food. Yeah. water and coffee and tea came with it and I drink a lot of water. I said I don’t think we even had a cocktail that night.

George
I said at least at one point. i It feels like we’re at a wedding. Yeah, before the Oak Ridge Boys started. It was just like, Okay, where’s the the bride and groom? But um, after we ate the Oak Ridge Boys came on and we were again very pleasantly surprised. You know, honestly, the only song that I knew that they sang was Elvira. And I will say this, I was so happy that it was a Christmas show. Yeah. When they were children. It was about Jesus Christ. It was about Santa Claus. It there was no, you know, and I’m stepping out on a limb. But there was no political handcuffs on the show. They it was an old time. Good old Christmas show.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. Yeah. Thank you very, very, very family friendly. There wasn’t a million kids there. But there was a good, good. There’s a lot of senior citizens. There’s several senior tour groups that were there. Of course, this was Christmas Eve. So you know, a lot of kids were I was surprised at how many children were actually at the hotel. Santa must have been coming to their hotel. Yeah, for them. But Santa Claus did show up at the show when he gave all the little kids Santa hats and gave them hugs. And

George
there were a lot of kids there because they even made a comment that usually they sing one song and all the kids had done they sang that song and they were still hanging out hat so they were

Lisa RichartHernandez
the patients 30 minutes maybe 25 Yeah, it was

George
but it was cool. And they had camera man and two big screen so you can see all the kids expression with Santa and it was really cool. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was a good Santa. He was a good Santa. And Lisa, Lisa, Jake’s

George
the whole thing cuz we’re watching all these kids and she goes I’m surprised none of these kids have cried yet. And right on cue. I mean, the words that didn’t even come out of her mouth and the next little girl that went out was just like, I want nothing to do with this old man who is so that was kind of funny. But um, again, their show is fantastic. And if anybody’s there next year during Christmas, go check out the Oak Ridge Boys go check out the Gaylord Opryland resort hotel.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, they they also have we didn’t even mention this but they had outdoor tubing hills as like a makeshift, they made it. I mean, it was pretty cool looking. But for kids, you could go tubing in the fake snow. Yeah. And they had outdoor ice skating. Yeah. And they had outdoor bumper cars, and all that was on ice on ice. But it’s kind of weird. It was it was no it was really cool. I suppose you have a Christmas but it was more like skating on snow than it was like a nice it was it was warm the weekend.

George
Yeah, I mean, there’s no Zamboni machine in Nashville, I would imagine. And if there is it’s at the The one arena for the hockey team. So what did was that it for that day? Yes, that one went back home. And then Saturday. Let’s see. Yeah. Saturday, we grabbed the bite at the Hilton downtown. That’s where we went. So we sat at the symphony lounge and had some cocktails with a few. Oh, yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So there was like nothing open during the daytime, daytime, of Christmas day. That was Christmas day.

George
Yeah. And that’s, that’s another tip for everybody. Make sure you look online before you head out anywhere and make sure that wherever you’re going is open. Or they don’t have a modified schedule. We found that a couple times and good thing that we looked at ahead of time. And there was one a couple places that also said that they were open and when we got there, they were closed. So just I guess it’s a normal Christmas thing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, no. And so I was like, probably a hotel is gonna have a cartel or something like eat to get like a snack to eat. So we did go to that. So that’s why we ended up at the Hilton in the lobby.

George
Yeah, it actually worked out. Really surprised. Food was really good. And then we Oh, we got our pro tip from Nikki from Florida. Remember Nikki? So she was sitting next to us ordering a bunch of drinks and she said to the bartender I want to Bacardi, Bacardi and Coke, NFL. And we were like, handing out like NFL glasses or cops or what what? So even the bartender looked at her and he was like NFL. And she said, yeah, no, effin lime. Yeah, she didn’t use FM she use the actual word. Fuck it. We’re on a podcast. So NFL, no fucking lime.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Which I hate lime. So yeah, so well. I definitely don’t like getting my Ricardian Diet Cokes. I love it. Yeah. So I thought that was funny.

George
So then from there, we headed over to the Redneck Riviera, because that was the only bar that was open at that time.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, again, the windows were open. It was like you walked on the street or like, let’s go to that bar. There’s live music from Yeah. And he was really good, too. Yeah. And

George
unfortunately, I didn’t get the name of that band. That was the one band that I didn’t get. I might have a picture of it on a video or something. Yeah, but if I find that I’ll post it on the notes. But that’s where we met our friends from Minnesota, Christina and Bryce. We had a blast with those two.

Lisa RichartHernandez
They were so nice. And that’s one of the things that we love to do when we travel is just to meet like other, you know, new people and now like we feel like we have new friends from North Dakota. And so we

George
are in North Dakota, Minnesota. They’re from Minnesota but they live in Fargo.

Lisa RichartHernandez
They live in Fargo. Isn’t that in North Dakota? It’s not in Minnesota. It’s near Minnesota. It’s all up there where it’s freezing cold. And how you betcha. You betcha. You betcha. So they the bar was completely packed. And they were sitting at a table that had four seats at it. There’s two seats there. And she was like, Do you guys want to sit here? And I was like, Sure. Yes. Thank you. And then that’s I guess that’s it now We’re BFFs. Yes. And so we just ended up having a great time with them and great conversation. I think we hung out with them. Like for the rest of the night almost, didn’t we?

George
Yeah, we actually we went out to dinner, and then met up with them again.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay. Oh, yes. We had dinner reservations at the Palm the palms. Yeah, yes. So we had a great service there. Oh,

George
hold on. Redneck Riviera. Awesome place. Love that bar. That is like a dark, dingy red bar. Awesome. I love that they had on almost all the walls. They had police badges, patches stuck on the wall. So it must be a police friendly bar. I love seeing those given my background. So from there we went to the palms to have dinner we already had dinner reservation so we said our goodbyes and headed over to the palms. I have to say this this is like a high end Steakhouse. And I’m assuming that at some point it was really like cat’s meow. Yeah. I I wasn’t really 100% impressed. The best part of the restaurant was our server and OUR DEANN our Dion is that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
She was so good. So nice, honest, beautiful. Super knowledge really money really, really attentive. And yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I do a lot of stalking of of the Google reviews on restaurants and I do a lot of stalking of the Yelp reviews and Open Table reviews. And you know, you can kind of tell, so I like to get an idea of what to order, you know, if I’m going to go to a restaurant or whatever, and we had a limited options on Christmas Day that were open. So I made these reservations well ahead of time, just to be sure that we had a place to eat on Christmas Day. And a lot of the I mean, it was pretty spot on with the reviews, it used to be a really great restaurant was the thing the food quality had gone down was some of the comments. So it had like a 4.3 Google review. For me, I don’t usually go in anything less than a 4.5 Especially if I’m going to drop a few $100 on it. But we didn’t have a lot of options and a lot of give it about that accurate rating. And

George
I was gonna say a lot of times we we kind of tried to read between the lines with reviews. Oh yeah, you’ll

Lisa RichartHernandez
get some reviews of people.

George
So we were like, Okay, let’s go try it out. Because this may not be on point but unfortunately they were right on point. My stake was I asked for medium rare and it was

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was probably medium well medium well

George
into well. Yeah, there was very little pink inside and outside was I mean almost crunchy.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then we split a thankfully we split a wedge salad. The wedge salad was gigantic, but did one of the comments on a review so that salad did have too much dressing and it really kind of did.

George
Fine Line though, because if there’s no not enough dressing people complain about if there’s too much. Yeah, that’s why it was I don’t know why restaurants just don’t put it on the side. Yeah, yeah. And let you serve whatever you want

Lisa RichartHernandez
was it was but that was okay. And then we got a lobster that she did prepared for us. tableside

George
or well cracked. Yes. It was already prepared and cooked. She all she did was get it out of the shell for us, which was incredible.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. gives us all the work and yeah, so that that part was really good. I had a shrimp cocktail, I think. Yeah, you had

George
the shrimp cocktail. That was good. That was very good. Read really big jumbo giant shrimp. Yeah. Yeah. The drink for good. Yeah, the service was fantastic again, but

Lisa RichartHernandez
blue cheese, all of stuff. Grey Goose Martini up with blue cheese olives. And that was good.

George
slightly dirty. And they did slightly dirty. We

Lisa RichartHernandez
had an Espresso Martini for dinner for dessert. Those

George
were very good. Everything was good. It was just a little. It kind of led us down with the the preparation

Lisa RichartHernandez
I would say exactly about a 4.3 Yeah, I mean, really? Oh, they

George
nailed it. They know that. You know,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, it just, it’s all about expectations. We have a pretty high standards when it comes to a steak house. So a 4.3 would be definitely by definition. That’s pretty accurate. Yeah. out of five stars.

George
So still good restaurant, but could do better. Yeah. Alright, so then after that, then we said well, let’s go meet up with our new best friends. We went to back to Jason all Dean’s and we went upstairs and we may have had one between one and six too many.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, cuz it was Christmas night. And there was that? That was one that really good. Country music I was playing.

George
Yes. Bobby McClendon.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes. Yep. And he is when I told you you had like a top 40 hit whatever. Yeah, there were really really it was might have been on one of the Country Music cruises that we that we were on, maybe in the past.

George
But that or one of the heroes

Lisa RichartHernandez
everybody sang and danced and sang and danced and it wasn’t very packs at all because it was Christmas night.

George
Yeah. It no it was perfect. We got great service are

Lisa RichartHernandez
beautiful outside. We have beautiful weather all weekend. Like literally in the 70s it was almost like crazy to warm. Some days sometimes. Yeah.

George
When we got there. It was cold. So we were like, man, we might be in for it.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s definitely you know, wear layers because you never know what you’re going to get in Tennessee. Like the first night it was 32 and the third night it was 70.

George
Yeah. So we had a blast. Almost too much fun because the next day we had to nurse quite a hangover. And that’s exactly what we did. We just slept in and I don’t think we got out of bed till 230. So I think that day, yeah, we went back to the scoreboard because the asthmatics were playing that night. And for those of you that don’t know, asthmatics is I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like an

Lisa RichartHernandez
80s band. It’s an 80s band, like nerds and are hilarious,

George
but it’s a franchise. It’s not just one band, there’s Oh, there’s a bunch of you can catch the spasmodic. anywhere and almost throughout the country. So the guys that come to Charleston are not these guys. Okay? So, but the guys that were playing in Nashville were spot on with all their songs. And the good thing is that they dress like nerds, and they interact with the audience. So the whole time, they’re just making the audience crack up because they’re just picking on everybody that’s out there. And of course, being in Nashville is a bunch of cowboys in the corner and they started singing some song and I think it was like, some village people song or something. And he goes, Hey, look, the guys in the corner from Brokeback Mountain. They love this song. And it just it rolled from there. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Really, really.

George
So that they were great performers. And

Lisa RichartHernandez
it wasn’t even as packed as that was the last time we were there for this asthmatics. I mean, it was full in there, but it wasn’t super packed. And I think it’s just because it was Christmas weekend.

George
So we watched us pathmatics And yeah, we were we were exhausted. We just didn’t have any

Lisa RichartHernandez
and that was that was the day that I ate that wouldn’t be hot chicken sandwich that

George
yes, that was like die. It was you had to taste it. And I was like, damn if this is wimpy I’m I’m away on a whim. Yes, it was. It was hot.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And you had pizza there the night the night before? Like two nights before that. Well, yeah, the

George
pizza was really good. They were really thin crust pizza.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You had a choice between thin or thick and you chose it then? Yeah. And then a bit thin crust pizza

George
the day we went to see this pathmatics I had their Reuben which was again, really good. For bar for bar food.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I thought it was yeah, it was Barford. I mean for bar food, it’s good. But then

George
we went back. So we went to score more like three times, it’s really a great

Lisa RichartHernandez
place is so convenient and always open.

George
And they have good food. But when we went back, and I can’t remember what day it was, but we went back just to have some dinner. And that’s when I had the ribs. Yeah, I had a half rack of ribs. And they were really, really, really good. They smoke them right on premises for hours, hours, and it was delicious, fall off the bone, Memphis barbecue sauce, and it was just really, really good. And that was pretty much us getting ready for war to leave. Then we found out that our friends were coming into town for their daughter’s 21st birthday. And they were going to be at the same campground that we were at. So you know, of course, we said one more night, we don’t need our arms twisted to hard. So we decided to find out if we could stay an extra night. And of course, there was availability at the kyoei however, we had to move spots. But that’s okay. You know, that never bothers me. It takes 10 minutes to do that. So we moved to our new spot. Our friends came in. And of course, you know, fresh livers wanted to go out and party and we were like, oh boy, we’re in trouble because they’re gonna want to stay out all night. And was that Sunday?

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think they came in on Monday. They came in on Monday. Yeah, because Sunday, that was Monday. Yeah, they came in on Monday.

George
So we went out Monday night with our friends, Christine and Bryce met us out. So we went to kid rocks with them. We were having a blast, and we’re talking about you know, they’re they’ve got to 21 year old with them. So we’re like, oh my god, they’re gonna want to stay out all frickin night. I don’t know if I can do this. Well, they went home about what eight o’clock or

Lisa RichartHernandez
something like that, where they’re don’t

George
they? They all sudden tapped out and they’re like, Hey, we’re gonna hit we call the Uber. We’re going home. And we’re like, what? It’s your 21st birthday. What do you mean you’re going home? Oh, they

Lisa RichartHernandez
got hit by the you need to pace yourself. Like you especially in Nashville. I learned like you don’t need to be doing shots. You know, you’re gonna drink plenty just from sitting there. Listen to the bands and having a good time. And next thing you know, you’re going to have drank too much. So you don’t need to go extra high speed overdo it like they you know when to do shots and stuff.

George
Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s a 21 year old move. Let’s do shots. Let’s do shots and four shots into it. They were ready for nuber so they left and of course, now we’re out so we’re not going home. And was that the night? What was that? Christine’s birthday night? Was that the same night?

Lisa RichartHernandez
They’re all starting to blend together now. Yes, yeah. Cuz she was like, You got to stay out till midnight. Because my birthday is actually like her birthday was actually the next day. So she’s like, I just have to midnight for my birthday. And I was like, I remember looking at my watch. Like, oh my God, that’s six hours from now. There’s no way

George
Yes, that’s right. When we first got down there, we we ran into them. Well, we told them we were at Jason Aldean. So they came over. And that was the first thing she said to you. You’ve got to stay out till midnight tonight because it’s my, it’s gonna be my birthday. And we looked at the watch, I’d looked at my watch. And I said, There’s no way we’re going to be out here another six hours. Well, seven hours later, we were getting an Uber, downtown Nashville to go back to the K OA, but a blast. We had every single bar on that night, we hit every bar. And unfortunately, once that shot, shots start, they don’t seem to stop. And I’m not a shot guy. And thank you, Bryce for buying me a couple shots. But I’m just not a shot guy. Because I know which direction I’m going to go and that’s down. And but man, we hit every bar, we had cocktails everywhere. And one of us got super hammered. I won’t say who it was.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, listen, who’s talking? Mister, I had to take you home two nights before that. So

George
that was two nights before. In the past that was in the past in the past? This is all in the past. And do you have video of that? Because I always say if you don’t have video This didn’t happen. As opposed to the video that I got of my lovely wife trying to kiss and hug one of the musicians. Oh my god, she was so drunk. She became like, instant groupie just standing. You

Lisa RichartHernandez
know, I was I was telling him how awesome he was. And I was not. I was not trying to like makeout kiss anybody I

George
write I got I got video video is evidence, creepy, stalker, whatever. So we it was just such a fun time. If you’re thinking of going to Nashville, go to Nashville. It’s a great place. I will say that. It’s funny because it’s hit or miss on whether it is super crowded, or deserted. Early on in the week. And again, this was Christmas. So it’s kind of hard to gauge. But early on in the week when we got there. It was it was kind of empty. So it was easy to get into all the bars easy to get serve as easy, easy, easy, easy. By the end of our trip. It was starting to get crowded. It was hard to get a seat at the bar. It was hard to get a drink.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Uber driver was saying they get about 350,000 visitors for New Year’s Eve weekend. And so I’m guessing that it was really packed. Yeah, lots of parties going on.

George
Yeah. Well, we saw some footage from Nashville. New Years, and it was jam packed. I actually wish we would have stayed there for New Year’s because we ended up Wow. We would have probably had to come home anyway. Because like Lisa said, we were not feeling too good right now.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. So while we were in Nashville, I got the news that my mom tested positive for COVID in the rehab center. So that was pretty stressful. And we were on our way home anyways. And I thought to myself, well, I was thinking I started getting a cough I think right before we were about to leave, maybe I’m one of the last mornings when we woke up I had a cough and stuffy nose. Yeah, a rainy day. So in normal world times are back in the olden days. Maybe back in 2019 ish time

George
chakra back circa 2000. Yes,

Lisa RichartHernandez
before that. When you just have like a float rainy day and you have a stuffy nose and a little bit of a cough, you’re like, Oh, I think I might be starting to get a cold. So and I knew I had been run down from being in Nashville for six days. So anyways, we decided on our way home from Hilton Head to stop and get COVID tests just be on the safe side. Because we had all the kids get tested also because they had been with my mom, and they all tested negative for COVID which is great. So they didn’t give it to my mom and we didn’t give it to my mom. But somehow we went to the drive thru Georgia with no symptoms tested positive for COVID. And I tested negative for COVID. But we assume that we both have it since I had the I had the coughing and stuffy nose and then two days ago I couldn’t smell.

George
Yeah, and we’ve had it before so we kind of were both

Lisa RichartHernandez
vaccinated. Yeah. So like, I wasn’t it’s not about being afraid to get a COVID again, but it was more of the inconvenience and just having to be away from everybody. Thankfully, my mom had it at the same time I guess and we I I would be really concerned about noise really careful, just because with my 84 year old mother living with us, we want to make sure she’s safe and take care of her. So thankfully, by the time she gets done with it, I’ll have had it again already. And sure my antibodies will be as boost as they can possibly be sorry, yeah, should all be pretty safe now. Yeah. And

George
last time we had it, we, we got tested a lot, because we travel a lot. And the last time that we had COVID, almost 11 months after COVID, we still had the antibodies. And every doctor, every nurse kept telling us now that it only last like three months or whatever, and we 11 months later, we still had it. Food for thought, I’m not going to get into the whole political COVID situation. It didn’t ruin our weekend, and we had a blast. And unfortunately, we came back with more than memories.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, but that’s okay. So all of our New Year’s Eve, party plans are canceled, unfortunately. And we didn’t get to wear my sparkly dress, which won’t fit me next year, because there’ll be so much thinner, but it’s fine. It’s fine. We had a blast in Nashville. And I’m glad that we had the opportunity to do that. And this year is all about just trying to look forward and and, and see the positive and everything and try to keep a positive attitude. The last two years have been really rough on me. Particularly, it’s been rough. I know it’s been rough on everyone, but just so much emotional drain from just, you know, aging parents and our business and, and just a lot of stuff going on. So I’m just looking forward to 2022. And I know I feel like I said this last year and I hate to even you know, try to sound positive and be like this, there’s got to be better than last it has to be, because I know we just said that for 2021. And that ended up just being crappy also. So

George
I realized that for 2021. I didn’t do my Cuban tradition. So that’s where we messed up. This year, we did it. And we’re going to have a great year. We’re not going to look back, we’re going to have positive results. Yes. And first thing I did this year, as soon as clock struck midnight, was the old Cuban, fill a bucket of water and throw it out the front door and wash out the bad.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And yeah, so probably do like every tradition of every thing or throw that

George
bucket out once a month. Yeah, guys, maybe Yeah, but we hope everybody had a fantastic new years and Christmas and you enjoyed time with your family and friends. And thank you for following us and listening to us. And we hope to bring you a lot of new fun content this year.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You know, we’ve got a few good trips planned already. At the end of January, we’re going to be going to the hoody fest, which is in Cancun, Mexico. It’s a five day concert on the beach, shown there at an all inclusive resort are excited about that we’ll be able to give you all the information and details about that. We’ve also planned a trip an Alaskan cruise in May, seeming that it doesn’t get canceled. For my birthday. We’re doing a 10 day cruise. For us. They’re practically giving us well not practically they are we get free cruise offers constantly. So we’re not sure yet if we’re going to try to do some more cruising in 2022. Obviously a lot will depend on COVID and my work schedule. But that’s it for that’s it to look forward to for now, right?

George
Yes. And whatever crazy trips we throw in the mix, because we got to do it. Otherwise we got nothing to talk to you guys about.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh, no, I have to go on vacation. I gotta do a podcast. Yeah. Work is work. That’s right. That’s right.

George
Well, thank you again for listening to us. I hope you enjoyed!

Lisa RichartHernandez
Feel free to reach out to us on our website, which is RView podcast rviewpodcast.com. And you can send us a message there don’t forget to subscribe following link so you can listen to all of our podcast and share this with your friends so we can become rich and famous. Have a good one.

George
Thank you. Bye bye

Lisa RichartHernandez
Happy New Year.

intro
Thanks for listening to another episode of RView don’t forget to drop us a line at Rviewpodcast.com That’s the letter Rviewpodcast.com And like, subscribe and follow us so you don’t miss out on our next adventure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai