Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville International Airport is 12km from downtown. Walk immediately to Lower Broadway — the block of neon-lit honky-tonk bars that is the heart of Nashville's live music scene. Every bar on Lower Broadway has live country music from noon to 2am, seven days a week; the musicians are professionals playing for tips, and the quality is startlingly high. Robert's Western World (the most authentic and unpretentious of the honky-tonks, with a 1980s time-warp atmosphere and a fried bologna sandwich that is genuinely excellent), Tootsies Orchid Lounge (the most storied, with walls covered in signed photographs from half a century of country music history), and Legends Corner are the essential Lower Broadway bars. The Ryman Auditorium, two blocks north, is the Mother Church of Country Music — tour it or attend a show. First night dinner at 1808 Grille or Catbird Seat for the best contemporary Nashville cooking.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is one of the finest music museums in the world — a 350,000-square-foot institution documenting the entire history of country music with extraordinary interactive exhibits, rare instruments, and personal artifacts from Hank Williams to Taylor Swift. The collection includes Elvis Presley's gold Cadillac, Patsy Cline's personal effects, and the complete recording history of every major country artist. The adjacent RCA Studio B (tours available) is the studio where Elvis, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, and hundreds of others recorded their greatest hits — the original equipment is intact and the tours are led by former studio engineers. Music Row — the two parallel streets of recording studios, management companies, and publishers that remain the industry's physical heart — connects the Hall of Fame to the Vanderbilt campus.

Nashville hot chicken is one of America's great regional food traditions — fried chicken marinated in cayenne paste and cooked to a fire-hot crust, served on white bread with pickles in a paper tray. Prince's Hot Chicken Shack on Ewing Drive is the original (1945) and still the best; the tenders at Hattie B's are the most refined; 400 Degrees serves at 2am when nothing else is open. A morning at 12South — Nashville's most photographed neighborhood of boutique shops, Instagram murals, and the I Believe in Nashville lettered building — for shopping and the Dose café for the best latte in the city. Hillsboro Village has Fido café (the quintessential Nashville coffee shop) and Pancake Pantry (lines form before it opens, weekend waits of 90 minutes, worth every minute). An afternoon at the Frist Art Museum for the best contemporary art exhibitions in the South.

The Grand Ole Opry is the longest-running live radio program in American history — broadcasting continuously since 1927 and still presenting live country music shows on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at the Opry House in Nashville's Opryland complex. The experience of attending an Opry show — multiple artists, each performing a set of 2-3 songs, with the audience's deep familiarity with both the tradition and the current artists creating an extraordinary energy — is one of America's great cultural events. Book tickets well in advance for weekend shows. The Opryland Hotel adjacent to the Opry is the largest non-gaming hotel in the United States, with a glass-roofed atrium of waterfalls and botanical gardens that is simultaneously overwhelming and genuinely impressive. A songwriter-in-the-round show at The Bluebird Café (the most important songwriter venue in Nashville, seats 90) is essential for seeing how Nashville songs are actually written.

Belle Meade Plantation, 8km west of downtown Nashville, is a National Historic Landmark of the antebellum South — a Greek Revival mansion and the plantation that bred the thoroughbred horses whose descendants have won multiple Kentucky Derbies. The tour confronts the full history of slavery that made the plantation possible, with interpretive guides who present both the grandeur of the estate and the devastating human cost of its creation —kat one of the South's most honest and most complete plantation history experiences. Belle Meade Winery and Distillery on the grounds produces Tennessee whiskey and fruit wines with a tasting room in the original carriage house. Nelson's Green Brier Distillery in Marathon Village is the revival of a pre-Prohibition Nashville whiskey brand —kat their Belle Meade Bourbon is one of Tennessee's finest expressions.

East Nashville is the most bohemian and most creatively interesting neighborhood in the city —kat a residential area of Victorian-era homes, independent restaurants, and the specific culture of Nashville's musicians, artists, and writers who moved here when downtown became too expensive. Five Points is the East Nashville hub, with Marche Artisan Foods for brunch (the finest brunch in Nashville), Dino's for the legendary cheeseburger, and the Tomato Art Fest in August. Germantown, north of downtown, is Nashville's oldest neighborhood and its most complete 19th-century streetscape of brick townhouses with Rolf and Daughters, Butcher & Bee, and the Nashville Farmers' Market in the converted 1909 Farmers Market building. The Parthenon in Centennial Park — a full-scale concrete replica of the Athens Parthenon built for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition — is one of Nashville's most unexpected and most enjoyable monuments.

Nashville International Airport has excellent connections to all US cities. A final Nashville morning: the Frothy Monkey on 12th Avenue South for the best coffee in the city, a final record store visit to Grimey's New & Preloved Music (the finest independent record store in the South, with an extraordinary selection and a knowledgeable staff), and a last piece of banana pudding from Biscuit Love in the Gulch. Take home a bottle of Belle Meade Bourbon, a Nashville hot chicken spice kit from Prince's, and a vinyl record from Grimey's. Nashville is a city that has music coming out of every door and every window — the correct response to leaving is to turn around and come back.