Six months after flooding made a mess of Nashville, the Opryland Hotel is opening for business again just in time for Christmas. And not a moment too soon, as Christmas is half the reason for going by the Opryland Hotel. The sea of lights and poinsettias is the Platonic ideal of what you’d expect from Christmas in Nash Vegas.
My first trip there was in 1993, on a long drive up with my then-girlfriend in the earlier days of the relationship, when I could write her off as “stressed” rather than “certifiable psychopath”. We drove up and back in a day just so we could drive through the lights, park, walk around, snicker at the CD offerings for the piano player in the Cascades who was evidently aping Yanni. For whatever reason, I was utterly taken with the place.
The Opryland Hotel is huge. I mean, frickin’ enormous. Opryland no longer exists as a theme park, but the hotel persists because its Death Star proportions make it ideal for convention business, especially with things like water taxis to downtown and the Sucker District up the Cumberland River, or showboat cruises on the General Jackson, or proximity to the Grand Ole Opry (for a long time, the studios of WSM-AM were right in the hotel). There’s a huge greenhouse of a thing with waterfalls and trees everywhere and a couple of restaurants, which is the aforementioned Cascades, and another one called the Conservatory which is even longer and full of paths, walkways, balconies – basically it’s the greatest Quake map in the world waiting to happen. And further back in the hotel, there are half a dozen assorted bars and restaurants, everything from a quasi-Irish pub to the obligatory Gone With The Wind-themed steakhouse. To cap it all off, they opened an expansion my last year in Nashville which they called the Delta, bigger than the Cascades and Conservatory combined, with an island in the middle full of shops and restaurants and a river around it big enough to offer flatboat rides on. All indoors. It’s basically a Vegas hotel without the hassle and inconvenience of actual gaming.
For three years in grad school, it was the best off-campus getaway I could muster. Drive over to Briley Parkway, stash the car, walk in, pop on the Walkman headphones, and just walk around in an atmosphere that called to mind nothing so much as all those Disney trips staying in the Contemporary Resort Hotel. Only greener and slightly twangier. It was at one of their brunch offerings where I first encountered creme brulee, and we all know how that turned out.
I didn’t go back for a while after leaving Nashville – the only way I got into town was on day trips up from home during holidays, and that left little time beyond just hitting Vanderbilt’s bookstore and maybe a spin through the West End – but at Christmas 2003, the then-girlfriend-now-wife and I drove up to Nashville, saw campus, saw Green Hills, drove over to the Opryland Hotel, and actually stayed the night at her insistence. And I was very glad she insisted – it gave us all the time in the world to stroll around, see all the sights, ride in the boat, drink in the pub, and experience a little bit of that escape from everything.
And even though I’ve spent time out here at the St. Francis Hotel, or the Ahwanee, or the Ritz-Carlton – for some reason, they’re just not the same.
“…at her insistence.”
Well, I didn’t hear you resist. At all. All I did was inquire about the price and was pleasantly surprised to hear how much it was. It also helps that A) I was comparing it to the price of a hotel in Manhattan, and 2) I wasn’t currently paying for a wedding or a mortgage. 😉
A tall blond with her own season tickets wants to get a room? At what point was I expected to offer resistance? =)