Taylor Swift, Country Music Hall Of Fame, TN

Popular amongst the younger women and tweens, Taylor Swift is known for her break ups, match ups with rich high profile young men. Has that not been the case with most star-muscians, may be the heart breaks and aches serves as inspiration to create music.

The country music star is from Nashville and has donated her outfits from the Speak Now Tour to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Her music sounds more like pop than Country music to me but I guess she is clasified a Country Music star because she write her own music and is from Nasville(do we need another reason?).

Taylor Swift has an amazing sense of style and is featured in magazines for what she wore to concerts and events to what she looked like when she stepped out of an airport. By donating her outfits, she has attracted a new genre to the Country Music Hall of Fame. A genre of young women too young to know the charisma of Elvis or Dolly Parton. Her exhibits are in the Hall of fame, but she is not yet inducted into it. I am sure her time will come too.

I like to hear Kelly Clarkson or Katie Perry over Swift among the new women vocalists. For no rhyme or reason, "The one who got away" chimes with me over "She wears short skirts, I wear t-shrits". The latter belongs to Swift and the former to Perry.

Each display has the picture taken from the concert and the outfits looks ravishing on her than in the display by itself.

Need I say, this post is dedicated to my daughter and all her friends whose consider it their foremost duty  to religiously update me on the latest on Taylor Swift. Without whom, I would have probably never known Taylor Swift. Thanks to Pandora, we listened to a wide genre of music on the long drive. No points for guessing whose songs played the most.

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Central BBQ, Memphis, TN



Do you remember the time when domestic flights were hardly full and a delay in a trip was an exception? The 14 hour long drive from Dallas to The Smoky mountains was way more pleasant than my 4 hour flights to NY and Virginia from Dallas. We broke our drive into two seven hour trips with a stop over at Memphis.



Wall Of Visitors - German Commissionary

Any Southerner will tell you a trip to Memphis is not complete with out a visit to the local barbecque joints. We visited two of the Memphis' best BBQ joints in town. The German Commissionary and the Central BBQ. The German Commissionary on our way to Tenessee and the Central BBQ on our way back to Dallas. It's really hard for me to tell which one was better. If I had to badly pick one then my choice would be the Central BBQ. Light, moist and slow cooked is how I would describe the food from both the joints.

Local Beer at Central BBQ

The Comissionary is more rustic with wooden walls like a log cabin, vintage bill boards, a reminiscence of the fact that they sold everything from fishing rods to groceries back in the days. The tables are more country with simple plaid table cloth, low celings providing that "neighbor hood joint" kind of a feel to it. The place is prod of it's origin and their visitors that range from Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and the likes.

Central BBQ is more fast-food joint style than the Commissioanry and the line was pretty long to get in. It was worth the wait. They also serve locally brewed beers. We brought back the BBQ rub and sauce from German Commissionary and Central BBQ. Great accompaniments on pulled meat from rotissory chicken. The BBQ rub works well on root vegetables.

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Burg Coffee, TN

 

Between the rains and the long walks there is certainly a special place for a coffee shop serving good coffee. It took me many many years to figure out what kind of coffee I like best; that any Barista could make. It happens to be a shot of espresso + hot water + a little bit of steamed 2% milk extra hot. It's neither a Cafe Mocha (espress + lots of steamed milk)  nor a Cafe Americano (espresso + hot water) and my version is a combination of the two.

 

The antique coffee grinder caught my attention. This one looks like a newer remake of the original "Box Coffee Grinders or Mill".

... one of the coffee shops located in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

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Sweet Tooth in The Smokies

 

Kilwin's is a chain and serves fudge, ice cream and chocolates with a limited collection of sorbets. This post needs no explanation. Presenting glucose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, lactose and everything sweet.

Candies

Nuts

Honey ... what else do you expect in a place where there are too many bears.

 

... and more fudge, which seems to be star attraction in the Smokies.

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Gatlinberg, TN - Part 2

The Celtic Heritage offers jewellery and music from Wales, Scotland and a couple of other European countries belonging to the Celtic culture. I am sure you can wiki-pedia-up Celti culture, so I shall refrain myself from cut-copy-pasting information. What appealed to me was the architecture of the building and of course, I was not expecting to see any Celtic reference deep down in the state of Tennessee. 

Ripley's Believe it or Not is probably the fastest growing franchise in the US of A. Seeing it mushroom in numerous tourist bound places. Guinness Book of World Records has a small museum here as well. You are bound to find hodge-podge of such entertainment centers in Gatlinburg.

One of my husband's favorite bands. Can you believe we could have seen Doors perform live for $4.00!!! ...  if only we were born before before the concert date. An old posture of the concert. You can find "Gone With The Wind" postures and the likes all over the place.

A view of the mountains from the road side. The town also happens to be a biker's paradise including motor cycles.

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Gatlinberg, TN

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are infested with Pancake houses and fudge shops. I find the latter too sugary and the former is an everyday actually just on weekends item in our household. So we were not too keen on trying either. 

A walk around the city does not take too long and there are free shuttles that drive you up and down the streets. The city has an old world charm and all the reminiscence of a mountain resort with log cabin style shops selling items raging from travel magnets to chilli sauces, cheeses, tees with hilarious captions on hiking and everything in between.

The Pepper Palace, sells various sauces, mostly chilli based. You could try their sauces if you were 18 or older. I am sure you can spot the chilli plants at the bottom of the display window.

I would classify the place more rustic than classy. You could make a wooden name tag when you are here. If you are lucky, you could spot artists tap dancing.

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Flora In The Smokies

The route to our cabin was steep, and on wet rainy days, you truly wished for that 4x4 fuel guzzler you refused to rent. A few mornings, Mahesh and I sans kids, walked around the steep path. One of best work outs I had in days.

The flowers remind me of the peaceful morning walks in the mountains. It pays to wake up before anybody else does to enjoy the temporary solitude.

I can never have enough pictures of the Black Eyed Susan or any other flower for that matter; especially those in their natural habitat.

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