This post is based on our six visits to Nashville from 2017 to 2022.

As of this writing (mid-2022), we’ve taken the Airstream to Nashville six times:

• November 2022, at the start of Big Trip #4
• October 2020, at the end of Big Trip #3
• December 2018, at the end of Big Trip #2
• October 2018, at the start of Big Trip #2
• December 2017, at the start of our loop out to Big Bend
• May 2017, while living in the Airstream full-time in Virginia

It’s a lot easier to read about our Nashville favorites in one place, rather than dig through multiple posts, so here we’ll pull together the highlights of all our visits, like we did for Asheville. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and was finally spurred to do it when the fabulous Cheenius booked a trip to Nashville to meet her childhood friend from Montana to watch the new Top Gun movie together, since they watched the first one together thirty-six years ago! How cool is that! Also, 36 years??? Ouch.

Without further ado, here are our Nashville favorites. Note that we are less country music-focused than many Nashville visitors, so interpret accordingly:

Campground

Uh oh. The future of our campground in Nashville has been in question over the last few years as the Fairgrounds complex is being redeveloped. Each time we visited over the years, the RV area was smaller and smaller, and I’m worried the campground is now closed to the public. The next closest RV park to downtown is Trinity RV Park in East Nashville, and while their website implies they’re a regular vacation RV campground, it also says this across the top: “EMPLOYED MONTH-TO-MONTH ONLY.” So maybe we’ll check that one out, maybe not. More info to come…

Breweries

Bearded Iris is one of our favorite breweries anywhere! We love it for the IPAs and sours, and the cool scene, both indoors and outdoors.

Cocktails

We’ve had some good cocktails in Nashville, but so far, no cocktail joint has blown us away. Please give us recommendations! (I just added one to our to do list at the bottom…)

Biscuits

Cheenius and I are birds of a feather: she specifically asked for biscuit recommendations. We sent her to Biscuit Love, with a warning: don’t go on the weekend, the lines are bananas! Be sure to get an order of bonuts for the table.

Non-biscuit food

Our favorite restaurants in Nashville, in descending order, are:

• Husk for dinner or brunch; the food (for both pig eaters and non-pig eaters) and drinks are consistently delicious across multiple visits. They’re also in Charleston and Savannah, but we haven’t been to those locations.
• Butcher & Bee for dinner and drinks. I see now that they do brunch too, so it’s going on the to do list!
• Mas Tacos Por Favor for fantastic margaritas and tacos and other Mexican street food treats. So yummy but so popular; be prepared to wait! To do: try their breakfast tacos.
• Virago for fancy sushi
• Butchertown Hall—we wrote glowingly about it in 2018, but neither of us can actually remember it, so perhaps it shouldn’t make the list… but their website mentions craft tacos and killer margaritas, so it seems like it should be here!

The first three we’ve visited more than once, and recently; the last two are favorites from several years ago, so I feel less sure about including them here, but until we find new favorites, that’s the list!

Running

When we’re in Nashville, we love running on the Shelby Bottoms Greenway, a shady, paved path along the Cumberland River close to downtown.

If you prefer running on a treadmill, we also enjoy classes at Barry’s Bootcamp.

Country music

There are obviously many places to hear country music in Music City, but we particularly enjoyed seeing the Don Kelley Band at Robert’s Western World.

Touristing

Downtown Nashville is a happening place: load of tourists, scads of shops, restaurants, and bars, and live music coming from every other doorway. We love walking up Broadway and down Second Ave to people-watch and pop into honky-tonks–in the afternoon, that is, because we are old and cranky and get annoyed with the nighttime crowds.

For a more peaceful and scenic walk, get out of downtown and explore the Vanderbilt campus and Centennial Park, and see the Parthenon and the Tennessee State Capitol.

Once you’ve worked up a calorie deficit with all that walking, refuel with a Bushwacker, a Nashville staple. It’s a boozy milkshake sold all over town, and Edley’s is a popular place to try one.

To do

We’ll be back in Nashville later in 2022 (assuming we have a place to camp) and will do more research! Anything we should add to our to do list?

• Find good cocktails (try LA Jackson, on a Travel + Leisure best-of list of world’s coolest hotel bars)
• Eat brunch at Butcher & Bee
• Try the breakfast tacos at Mas Tacos
• What else?