Monday April 6 Cali is the most polite American we have ever met!

Good evening readers. The time contained in this post is the minority for how we spent the day, but despite the fun we had in Nashville, it is by far the most enjoyable. It did, however, start on a rather odd note. Pete's last post ended with us making a mad dash to a restaurant to meet up with Cali, the scheduled meeting time was between 6:30 and 7. We arrived at about 6:45 hoping that if she was already there, she hadn't been waiting long. As we walked up to the seater of the restaurant, we didn't really know what to say. Turns out honesty wasn't the right approach.

"Welcome" she said.
"Hi" we responded. "We are to meet a friend here. Has she arrived yet?"
"What is her name?" the server asked.
"Cali" we said.
"No, there is nobody listed named Cali. Why don't you take a look around and maybe you can see her."
"Well.... we don't exactly know what she looks like."
At this point, the waitresses eyes went very wide with some sort of sudden insight, her mouth dropped open, and all she could say for a moment was "......oooooooooh...."
Eventually, she realized she was still standing there, staring at us with her mouth wide open. She then executed one of the fastest about-faces I had ever seen and began to walk away, whispering the words "Follow me." as she went.
/sigh

Ahh well. Turns out we were exceptionally early. At some point, unknown to us, we had crossed a time zone. When Cali still hadn't arrived, and it was now a quarter after seven, we began to do some thinking... something we try not to do very often. The light bulb eventually turned on over our head as we realized our error. Soon Cali showed up and we enjoyed a pleasant meal that included deep fried pickles, something neither Pete nor I have ever had. They had an extremely bizarre, but fun flavor.

We then took a drive down to the Opryland Hotel, one of the most spectacular buildings I have ever been in. Only my own family would recognize the reference, but it was like Ester's Inn on steroids. It had a river running through it, an entire building complex, and more trees and plants than most forests.


After exploring the indoor jungle, we proceeded to a local bowling alley where I was able to apply some of the skills Celer had taught us, and won both games. Both games, Cali and Pete were neck and neck, with the point split being only one or two points. The evening ended with us being kicked out of McDonald's after knocking back sundays and discussing the unusual name of our Canadian one and two dollar coins.

All in all, an immensely enjoyable evening, everything that we hoped for and more. All that remains now is to go to sleep and be ready for a very early morning tomorrow morning. Each morning of this trip so far was supposed to be early, but this time we mean it. Honest.