04/09/17 - Day 6 - Nashville, TN - Vandy, Centennial Park, Titan's Stadium, Downtown

Pretty Sunday, spent the morning and early afternoon exploring the area around Vanderbilt and downtown.  I drove from southeast Nashville to just outside the campus, unpacked the the bike, and headed out.  This part of town is much more bike friendly - very few telephone poles planted squarely in the middle of the sidewalks.  Fairly early I found out that the locals get super stoked for pancakes on a Sunday morning.


I hadn't been to Vanderbilt's campus since the 2006 Florida @ Vandy game.  The stadium looks pretty similar, although it was locked up so I couldn't poke around inside.


Centennial Park is just adjacent to Vanderbilt's campus.  For those who aren't aware, about 120 years ago they built a full scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon.  It's not made out of marble like the real thing, but it strikes an imposing image.



There's an art museum within but it was closed when I visited.  The surrounding park is very nice, a little bit like NYC's Central Park but not as large.  Jax doesn't have anything like this in town.


There are lots of flowering trees (dogwood and cherry, I think) and other plants that really made the ride very pleasant.  Below is a brief example of the experience riding towards the Parthenon.


I checked my GPS and noticed that downtown really isn't that far away from the park, so I headed over to see what it looks like in the daylight.


I rode past Broadway and noticed that there was still a pretty fair sized crowd of folks visiting the bar scene even at 11am on a Sunday.  Before joining them I decided to check out the pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland river leading to the Tennessee Titan's stadium



Nissan stadium has a couple of interesting features.  First, all their gates are named after Nissan products and are adorned with an example of such.


Second, the stadium caters to Titan fans who are bleeding heart liberal hippies.


Heading back over the bridge provided some nice view of the downtown skyline.




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