a great Friday

Friday we slept late again and walked to the hotel again. We went through there and on to the Opry Mills mall. It was another beautiful, temperate day. We enjoyed the walk and additional trip through the luxurious hotel. The mall must be more than 1 ½ miles from where we were staying. I had called the Opry ticket office to buy tickets for tonight’s performance and was told that parking downtown was free but learned later that it was not. We went past a golf store that was closing for the winter, and I wanted a new golf bag so I bought one at a very good price. The man wanted to sell so he agreed to pay most of the shipping cost to Texas. We don’t have room for a golf bag in the car. We also found a food court and shared a lunch at a TGIFriday restaurant. It was very good and we both wonder how people eat a full meal by themselves. We walked back through the hotel and saw a lady on stilts on her arms and legs, wrapped in vines and painted green. She is billed as “DiVine”. She moves around slowly, appearing to be attached to walls. It is quite entertaining and fascinating to watch her. She was trained as a gymnast. We returned for a nap and just snacked for supper. We drove to the Ryman Auditorium where the Opry is presented during the winter. Normally it is performed at the auditorium in the hotel near here. We were early downtown and, after finding a place to park along the street, we went to the Sheraton and listened to a pianist until time to go to the Opry. The seats in the old Ryman are old church pews and are not comfortable. We did tolerate them and enjoy most of the performers (there were 16 over the course of the 2 hours). We had heard many of them on our XM Bluegrass station. We left and came back to the Crackerbarrel for an apple streusel pie and ice cream. Evelyn was hungry and needed an ice cream fix. We came home for another good night’s sleep.