Nashville 1, Louisville 0

Saturday morning dawned and we were up early again, ready to make the most of our day. Our schedule for the day was to visit some stops along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, namely Maker's Mark Distillery. We had to get started early since we had plans to be in Nashville by the evening. Somehow, in the confusion of planning the night before, I got roped in to accompanying the girls to the Zappo's Shoe Outlet store before heading over to Maker's Mark. I agreed to this plan, because it allowed me to spend some time in the passenger seat as well as save some money on gas. Little did I know that this decision would cost me so much more. We arrived at Zappo's around 10 a.m. with the intention of shopping for an hour then heading down the road to the distilleries. In my sage-like wisdom, I brought a book to read in the car, therefore not risking exposure to the madness inside. I waited for about an hour while the temperature in the car slowly decreased to match the frigid weather outside. It was a happy feeling when I began to glimpse Katie and Mary appearing through the fogged windows; I anxious for the heat to start blasting. To my dismay, when Mary tried to turn on the car nothing happened. The lights had been left on during the hour of shopping and now we needed a jump to get the car going. With no jumper cables, we got out and started to ask all of the people around us if anyone had jumper cables and was willing to give us a jump. No one was biting and we were forced to resort to calling the towing company. After waiting for a half hour we called the company again to find out that there was some confusion with the insurance company and they never got the call. To make a long story short, it took the company over 3 hours of repeated phone calls to finally show up and jump the car. By this time, our dreams of going to Maker's Mark were over. We headed back to Mary's, were glad to see that CJ was still running strong, then made our way towards Nashville. At Sarah and Scott's house, they greeted us with homemade pizza's and some local beer. Later on in the night we went down to the main strip and explored the Saturday night bar scene in Nashville complete with cowboy hats and boots on each person, and live music at every bar it. Needless to say it was a good time.

Sunday morning Sarah and Scott took us on a tour Nashville.

We started the day at the Parthenon, thats right, the Parthenon. Nashville has a complete, full scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens Greece, just blocks away from their house. Who knew??? Sadly it wasn't open so we could not see the recreation of the giant golden statue of Athena which is reportedly inside, but we still got to walk around its exterior and experience the size and beauty of the monument in its complete glory. My favorite part was the pediments on either end of the Parthenon, fully recreated and telling stories of the struggle between Athena and Poseidon for the rule of the city of Athens as well as the birth of Athena, the victor of the struggle. Next on our list was a stop at Vanderbelt University (where both Sarah and Scott work) to stop by

their research lab and show us around. Afterwards we went by a coffee shop called Ugly Mugs which Katie had high expectations for. Loving awkward and ugly things, Katie expected this place to live up to its name and have nothing but horribly ugly mugs for everyone to drink from; this was not the case. The mugs were definitely old but most were pretty normal and

since the novelty was gone, we got our coffee to go and headed to the Nashville Zoo. Sarah and Scott had adopted an elephant, Rosie, at the zoo and as a result they got a couple of free passes. They of course have a yearly pass to the zoo so they were more than happy to give us the free passes for the day. The zoo was awesome. They had a lot of African animals and since it was the middle of winter many of them were kept inside

away from our view. The ones that

weren't however were up and moving trying to keep warm in the snow. They had Bengal Tigers, Cougars, and Lynx's all of which were up and roaming the cages instead of displaying the usual lethargic laying around that you associate with zoos. After the zoo closed and we were forced to leave, we headed to the suburb of Smyrna to have dinner with another of Katie's friends from college. That night the AFC and NFC championship games were on and we spent around 3 hours talking, enjoying southern bbq, and watching the games, before heading back to the city for the night.