Nashville

Nashville is a long way from any sea, so a beach vacation is out of the question. What it does have is reservoir lakes on the edge of the city. Percy Priest Lake and Old Hickory Lake have small swimming areas, boat ramps and warm water through the long summer, often in the high 20s°C. Locals spend hot weekends on pontoon boats more than on sand. For a visitor this makes a pleasant afternoon at most, and outside summer even that drops away.

Nashville's own dish is hot chicken: fried chicken soaked in a cayenne paste, served on white bread with pickles, and graded from mild to painfully hot. Around it sits a broad Southern tradition. Meat-and-three cafeterias serve a main and three sides such as greens, mac and cheese and fried okra, and there is slow-smoked barbecue, biscuits at breakfast and Tennessee whiskey at the bar.

Beyond the classics, the chef-driven restaurants of East Nashville, Germantown and the Gulch take Southern produce in modern directions, and Nolensville Pike has an unexpectedly deep run of Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places. Downtown, by contrast, leans heavily on bar food for crowds. The range is real but narrow beyond the Southern core.

Most of Nashville's sights are about music. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is the main one, a large and well-told history of the genre. Nearby are the National Museum of African American Music, the Musicians Hall of Fame and a cluster of smaller museums devoted to single stars. The Ryman Auditorium, a 19th-century tabernacle turned concert hall, is worth a tour in daytime.

Beyond music, Centennial Park holds a full-scale replica of the Parthenon with an art gallery inside, and the Frist Art Museum fills a grand Art Deco post office. Andrew Jackson's Hermitage plantation and Belle Meade's antebellum mansion cover the harder history of the region. Downtown has some Victorian brick along Second Avenue, but the city is mostly modern.

Lower Broadway is one of the best-known stretches of bars in the country: several blocks of multi-storey honky-tonks with a band on every floor, doors open to the street and a crowd that does not thin until the small hours. It is loud, cheerful and full of hen and stag groups, and on weekends the whole strip runs as one long party. Rooftop bars look over it.

If that is not your style, East Nashville has relaxed neighbourhood dive bars and cocktail lounges, and Midtown near the universities draws a younger crowd. Dance clubs are few, and the night here is about drinking with music rather than DJs. The variety beyond Broadway is moderate, but few American cities go out as often.

Middle Tennessee is gentle, green country of wooded hills, limestone creeks and farmland. Inside the city, Radnor Lake is a quiet nature reserve with deer, owls and easy trails, and the Warner Parks offer longer forest walks on the western edge. Greenways follow the Cumberland River, and the Harpeth River is good for an easy canoe or kayak trip.

The lakes east of town are used for boating and fishing, and the Natchez Trace Parkway, a historic route through forest and fields, starts just south of the city and suits cycling and scenic driving. Mammoth Cave is reachable for a long day. Summers are hot and humid, so spring and autumn, with their wildflowers and leaf colour, are the best seasons for being outdoors.

The best short trip is Franklin, half an hour south, a handsome small town with a preserved Main Street and the Civil War battlefields and plantation houses of Carnton and Carter House. Nearby Leiper's Fork is a tiny village of galleries and roadhouses. Murfreesboro has the Stones River battlefield.

Whiskey country is within reach too: the Jack Daniel's distillery in dry Lynchburg is about an hour and a half away, and George Dickel lies in the same area. Chattanooga, with its riverfront and Lookout Mountain, sits at the edge of a day out at about two hours, as does Bowling Green with its Corvette museum. It is a pleasant list of small towns and history rather than major destinations.

Nashville works reasonably well with children if you plan around the attractions rather than the downtown strip. The Nashville Zoo at Grassmere is a good one, the Adventure Science Center has a planetarium and hands-on exhibits, and the Lane Motor Museum's odd collection of cars appeals to all ages. In summer, a water park by Percy Priest Lake and the big parks and splash pads help with the heat.

The Country Music Hall of Fame has family activities, and the Parthenon impresses most children. Lower Broadway, though, is built for adult drinking, loud and crowded into the night. Southern friendliness makes restaurants welcoming, but the spread-out layout means a lot of time in the car.

Downtown is small and easy on foot: Broadway, the Ryman, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the riverfront and the Gulch are all within a short walk of each other, and the pedestrian bridge crosses to the east bank. Beyond that core, Nashville is a spread-out Southern city built around the car.

Public transport is a bus network with no metro or tram, so most visitors use ride-hailing or rent a car. The Grand Ole Opry, the Hermitage, Belle Meade and neighbourhoods like East Nashville and 12 South are each a drive apart, and traffic on the interstates is heavy at rush hour. Pedal taverns and party vehicles add to the congestion downtown.

Shopping here has a theme: Western wear and music. Lower Broadway is lined with boot shops and stores selling hats and rhinestone shirts, and the city is one of the best places anywhere to browse vintage and new guitars. Hatch Show Print, a letterpress shop operating since the 19th century, sells its bold concert posters.

For something quieter, 12 South and East Nashville have independent boutiques, local designers and record shops, and Hillsboro Village suits a browse. Big-name and luxury stores are confined to suburban malls such as those in Green Hills. Beyond the music and cowboy niche, the range is modest.

Nashville is not a cheap city to visit. Downtown hotels are expensive, especially on weekends and during big events, when demand from groups pushes rates higher still. Eating out and drinking cost what they do in other large American cities, with tips and taxes on top, and ride-hailing adds up because so much is spread out.

The main relief is that much of the music costs nothing: the honky-tonks on Broadway have no cover charge and bands play from late morning. Staying midweek, outside downtown, or eating at meat-and-three cafeterias and hot chicken counters makes a real difference.

Live music is the reason most people come. The Grand Ole Opry, the long-running country radio show, stages performances several nights a week, and the Ryman Auditorium, with its pews and famous acoustics, hosts touring artists of every genre. On Lower Broadway, bands play in every honky-tonk from late morning until the early hours.

The deeper scene is in smaller rooms: intimate songwriter nights where the people who wrote the hits play them on acoustic guitars, bluegrass in a modest club near the Gulch, and rock and Americana venues in East Nashville. The Nashville Symphony plays in the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, a fine concert hall, and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center hosts the ballet, opera and touring musicals.

Nashville has no bathing or spa tradition of its own. Wellness means hotel spas and day spas in the wealthier neighbourhoods, and the downtown mood is built around noise and late nights rather than rest. A slower stay is possible in the leafy residential areas of Belmont, Hillsboro or the area south of the city, with porch-front cafés and quiet parks, but nobody chooses the city to unwind.