Nashville Day 4: "Country Girl Shake it for Me"

It was Saturday and we were at the halfway point of CMA Fest with two more concert nights to go. There wasn't really anyone playing during the daytime that we cared about seeing and at least one of us was done with the heat so we decided to sleep in a little and go to brunch. We walked the mile or so to Broadway and then one block over to Hampton Social, a cute little place with a New England-focused menu.

We started with some brunch-y drinks.

Melissa had the french toast.

I had a beet salad (beets are a new discovery for me)

And grilled octopus

The food was great and we entertained ourselves watching the big groups of women in and out of the restaurant for what looked like bachelorette parties, birthdays, and baby showers. It was already getting hot so we took an Uber back to the condo to relax until dinner.

Some time during the afternoon, we noticed smoke coming from across the river from our condo.

It got worse pretty fast and we were both hoping that it wasn't the concert stadium on fire. Turned out to be a warehouse and thankfully no one was hurt.

At our usual 530p dinnertime, we walked down the street to Sedona Taphouse, a restaurant in Germantown which was the name of the area where we were staying. It was an historic-looking area with $1M restored homes lining the street. After our big brunch we weren't that hungry so Melissa just got a flatbread.

While I got crab cakes with brussel sprouts and mashed potatoes.

Then it was time to walk across that bridge again. This was our view each night while walking.

We usually arrived to our seats about 30 minutes before showtime.

The oldie opener tonight was Randy Houser who I'd never heard of.

Next up was Brothers Osborne who were a big disappointment. We were looking forward to seeing them but they focused way too much on guitar solos for our taste.

Then on to Luke Combs who really got the stadium rocking.

During the bathroom break, Mitchell Tenpenny sang a couple of songs.

Up next was my favorite of the night, Luke Bryan. He put on a long show. I heard rumors online that he was usually the closer but they didn't want him closing anymore because he always went over time. Sounds about right.

The closer of the night was Carrie Underwood, who the two of us cannot stand. Ugh. We contemplated leaving but in the end we decided to stay for the show since we paid for it.

Back across the bridge we went again after the show to figure out how to get home. I saw from looking at a map that we could walk two blocks west and go north to our condo and stay on busy streets with plenty of people around. It was better than $40 and 40 minutes to go the same mile in an Uber so that's what we did and it worked out fine.