Superman and Music City

The signs began almost 100 miles out: "Superman waits for you!  Come tour Metropolis!" and "Giant Superman Statue!!"

We couldn't help ourselves.

Who knew that the populous-seeming, crime-ridden home of Clark Kent and the Daily Planet was actually a tiny, tiny town in the middle of southern Illinois, which looks like this?

At least, though, they have their fifteen-foot statue of the Man of Steel in Superman Square (although I would hesitate to call fifteen feet "giant").

It took a while to get over the sheer excitement of experiencing Metropolis.  By the time we reached Nashville, however, we had recovered sufficiently to putter around for a while.  

I'm going to pull a Victor Hugo here:  Although it in no way concerns my story, I will now include an aside about the parking garages of Nashville. (Unlike Hugo, though, I'll keep the aside under fifty pages.)  In short, the parking garage we used was insane.  You Portlanders?  Picture the garage at Powells--you know, with the random posts in the middle of the road and the narrow, tightly curving honk-as-you-go-to-avoid-head-on-collisions passages with layers of paint scrapes along the walls from all who misjudged their cars' turning radii--only crazier, with a more maze-like configuration and chambers off of the main artery with no exits, so you had to do a seven-point turn to get out if there wasn't a spot.  Yeah, insane like that.  Gold star for my car, though, for handling the turns. We escaped unscathed. Barely.

Okay.  Aside finis.  Back to the day's narrative.

My mum had never eaten at a Hard Rock Cafe, and we figured Nashville was the perfect place to check that seems-like-something-iconic-to-do-sometime thing off her list.  It was sort of hilarious, though, since neither of us are huge rock and roll people--not to mention country-loving rock and roll people--so we were not fully able to appreciate what I'm sure was an excellent collection of memorabilia.  We kept saying really knowledgeable things like, "Interesting jacket.  I wonder who that guy is."  Our waitress was very sweet, but quickly gave up on actually trying to have a conversation with us.

Actually, I had that I-bet-that's-cool-if-you-know-about-those-kinds-of-things feeling throughout most of Nashville.  It was fun--as it always is to wander around and see new places--but not somewhere I would hurry back to see again.   I felt like it was filled with history and significant moments that were just completely lost to me (also filled with lots of loud, live country music, honky-tonks, and western apparel--"buy one pair of boots, get two pair free!").  I bet it would be more fun with a local to show me around.  

I will say, though, the ice-cream at Mike's ("Home of Nashville's First Espresso Machine") was phenomenal.

More on point, however: We are now definitely south of the Ohio River and in the land of elongated vowels and sweet tea.  Tomorrow, Charlotte-ho!