Days 534-540! We’re flying through the month of June! It’s about to be July before we know it. This week I finish off my time in Nashville with both my friend Harrison and my parents. Then we headed back to Peoria, but had a fun little pit stop along the way… in a small town with very large items…

I started the week on Thursday, June 19th at my friend Harrison’s house. Today was my last day here and I spent the majority of the morning working on video editing for my friend Jack, from Australia.

Harrison was out detailing cars, but I wasn’t alone. His cat Kitty was hanging out with me and keeping me company!

Harrison and I jammed out for a bit in the afternoon and he showed me some more of the music he’s working on. And then him, Lauren, and I went out for Nashville hot chicken for dinner!

I’ve had Hattie B’s before, but today we got Prince’s Hot Chicken! It’s been awhile since I’ve had Hattie B’s, so I can’t compare them, but this chicken was really good and I’d lean on the side of saying it was better.

We spent the rest of the night watching season 3 of severance and chatting. Not a bad end to my time of relaxation at Harrison’s house.

My parents headed down to Nashville on Friday, June 20th and were arriving in the afternoon. Harrison had to leave bright and early for some more detailing. But he was back before my parents came to pick me up, so we hung out a bit until then.

My parents arrived around 4:30pm, said hello to Harrison, and then we went straight to our hotel which was a bit north of Harrison’s house.

It was such a nice week hanging with Harrison! I’m very excited and happy for all the success he is having in the DJ and producer world and I can’t wait to see his continued achievements! I’m very lucky to have such talented friends and hospitable friends too.

Harrison suggested that we should go to Edley’s BBQ for dinner… and I didn’t realize until we arrived that it’s where me and my friends went during the weekend! But, I love barbecue and Edley’s was tasty, so I was game to have it again!

After dinner, we made our way to Nashville’s Broadway Street. I’ve been to Nashville a number of times, but this was my first experience of this crazy street.

We parked, for free, at the Tennessee Titans stadium and walked across the pedestrian bridge and made our way to the busy street.

Just off of Broadway Street, we found a dueling piano bar called Bayou Keys. We ended up sitting there for a lot longer than we expected and had a wonderful time!

Everyone in the bar was singing along, people were dancing, and there was a lot of good music being played. The pianists were really talented too!

After a few hours we made our way onto Broadway Street to wander around and observe the chaos.

We called it an “early” night (early for Nashville standards for sure) and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before more exploring the following day.

Saturday, June 21st was a HOT day. The Midwest was getting blasted by a heatwave. We started our day with a hearty brunch at a nearby Waffle House. Afterwards we braved the heat and headed to Centennial Park for a bit of sightseeing!

For some reason, Nashville is home to the only full scale replica of the Parthenon. So today, we were going to visit it.

It’s made out of concrete, but it was still very impressive. Pretty random to have in Nashville, in my opinion. There’s an art museum that you can pay to enter underneath, which we did not do. And you can’t enter the Parthenon. But it was cool to walk around.

It was not cool at all outside… not in the slightest.

We didn’t lallygag and we made our way to the next tourist spot.

Taylor Swift’s bench! Or at least a bench dedicated to her by the city.

Apparently the city put a bench here after Taylor Swift’s song lyric “Green was the color of the grass where I used to read at Centennial Park” in Invisible String.

We continued on with our sightseeing and made our way to The Gulch, one of the districts in downtown Nashville. Here there were shops to walk around and a number of murals to see as well. The heat was still killer so we only lasted about an hour walking around.

After sweating our butts off, we decided to go check out the L & L Market. This was a good spot to cool down in the AC of the market and check out the different stores it had to offer. The big drive was a charcuterie train restaurant (like a sushi train restaurant but for charcuterie)… but we were still too full from brunch.

So we headed back to the hotel to relax and cool off before dinner.

We headed back out for dinner at a Greek restaurant called Greko Greek Street Food. It was a decent meal but as we were eating a torrential downpour came out of nowhere. Luckily we still had playing cards and we started up a game of cards as we waited for the rain to stop.

Once the rain stopped, we found a nearby bar to go hang out at. The bar’s name was Up Down, which happened to be a bar I used to frequent in Kansas City! It’s a retro game bar full of pinball machines, Atari games, old Nintendo games, ski ball, etc. We spent a couple hours there and had a really fun time!

We went back to the hotel, finished our card game, and then called it a night. We had a long drive ahead of us the following day.

Sunday, June 22nd meant it was time to head back home.

I received a nice surprise in the morning. A couple of my friends from Bonnaroo were at another music festival called Electric Forest, which my cousin was at as well! And they actually ran into each other at the festival!! They all had pictures of each other but I wasn’t expecting them to actually find each other in all the people there!

My parents and I started our drive back to Illinois and we decided to take our time on the way back. So instead of going directly home, we put our destination for Casey, Illinois…

Why?

Because Casey, Illinois is a little town full of BIG things!

This town has a handful of official Guinness Records and just a bunch of really big things. It was very goofy walking around this small town full of oversized objects. And being a tourist of our own state was a nice treat as well.

We drove to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois for dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant. And it turned out one of the workers was from Chiang Mai! I told her I was there for Songkran last year and she was very excited to hear that.

We finished off our drive home and relaxed for the rest of the night!

Monday, June 23rd was a VERY hot day. There was a lot of relaxing, video editing, card playing, guitar strumming, and TV watching. So not too much to note from today.

Tuesday, June 24th however, my father and I woke up early to beat the heat to do some yard work! Some bushes were overgrown behind our garage so it was time to trim them up!

We worked for a couple hours and still had more to do, so we put it off for the following morning. It was already getting very hot!

I did more video editing in the morning, I was getting close to finishing up this project. I also received a text from my former hostel manager, Yi! And I got a fantastic picture from some of the staff.

This made me miss them all a lot! I think about Koh Tao and SE Asia a fair amount already, but this was really great to receive.

Later in the day, my mother and I went to the gym! It was nice to get a full gym session in, it’s been a while since I’ve gone regularly and hopefully I’ll be able to while I’m in town.

I thought I was finished with my video editing but I had a little more to do. But after I sent it off to Jack this time around, I was all wrapped up! I also played about 2 hours of guitar and worked on a song I’ve been writing for a while now.

I also started looking into language schools for the start of my Central America adventure!

We had dinner, played some cards, and then my mom and I continued watching a terrible TV show on Netflix called Fubar (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger). We finished off the night with watching a great TV show called Welcome to Wrexham.

Another week had blown by and it was already Wednesday, June 25th! My dad and I woke up early again to get back out to finish up the yard work. After finishing up with the bushes, I mowed the lawn. Took me back to farming and also all the way back to middle school and high school when I took over mowing our lawn.

As it was another absurdly hot day, I spent the majority of it indoors. I played piano for a bit, played guitar, ran some errands with my mother, and played a number of card games with her as well… where I still kept getting beat!

I think I won once today…

We finished off our day with more TV watching. Fubar got a little better, but not much.

I can’t thank my parents enough for driving down to Nashville and picking me up! I love hanging out with them and appreciate everything they do for me!!

It was another great week in the US! I am itching to get back out and explore the world, but I’m also really excited to relax at home with my parents for a bit before my next adventure. I have a fun week coming up filled with family friends and more hot days. So I have plenty to look forward to. July will be a lot of hanging at home, but I have some little things sprinkled here and there.

Oh! And don’t forget to check out my new music if you haven’t already… or want to listen to it again!

See you next week!

– Elie