Boldly Go Solo

The Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, like most any place in the world, can be visited and enjoyed by solo travelers. But you will be mingling with a whole bunch of families, kids, extended families, retired couples, conventioneers and people just generally wild about country music. If you fit into any of those categories, or are happy to be among them, you will feel at home.

If you’re big into Epcot Center-like replications of Southern architecture and quaint country towns, it’s the place for you.

If you want to go next door and see a show at the Grand Ole Opry, the place is for you. 

If you never want to venture out of doors, this is the place for you.

I was there to speak to the conventioneers. County officials from around the U.S. I had just one night. In the morning, I woke up with Wynonna. The country singer. I thought she was going to serenade me during my wake-up call. But no. She just talked me through. “I hope you have the very best day you can right here in Music City.”

Why thanks, Wynonna! I sure will. Or, as they say, "I sher wheel." I could have chosen George Adkins or Vince Gill or Kellie Pickler. As in, “press 1 for Trace Adkins, press 2 for Montgomery Gentry.” Don’t ask me why I went with Wynonna. I don’t know the music of any of these singers.

So one seemed as good as the next.

The Gaylord Opryland Hotel is a strange, strange place. Kitschy. Ersatz. With some of the most beautiful and exotic real plants and flowers I’ve ever seen. But about as far from the wild as you can get.

The place is a country music version of The Truman Show, if you remember that Jim Carrey movie where the star lives in a big fake world in an enormous bubble. Only HE doesn’t realize it.

The visitors at Opryland know it. And they pay good money to experience living and being entertained under glass. All atrium, all the time.

The hotel is inside out. The gardens are on the inside. So are the benches, gazebos, room balconies. Even a river. There’s nothing much on the outside. Except transportation to and from the airport. And a pool. In the morning, I was walking down a pathway with plants on all sides and I thought, "Oh, it's getting cool out." Until I remembered I was still in. Must have just been a different air conditioning setting in that portion.

The place is enormous. I was given a map to help me get to my room from the registration desk. There are also maps at every point where you can make a turn. Which means there are many, many of these maps as you navigate through the Cascades area to the Garden Observatory to the Magnolia section and so on.

Overheard on the elevator. “My calves are going to be a little tight tomorrow.” And, “I don’t know why they have a fitness center. Just walk around the hotel. I can feel it in my knees, my ankles, my feet.”

You can pay to take audio tours of all the gardens and atriums. You can also pay to take a riverboat tour. On the fake river. Inside. And float right by the fake Loch Ness monster. (as opposed to the real one?)

Who dreams up these places??

I’ve been to the hotel three times over the years. Always for conferences. I’ve never had a chance to get into the “real” Nashville for some dinner or music. Shame on me. But I’m sure to end up at Opryland again some day for another conference. I really do need to make a point of getting out.  

Photos: Ellen Perlman

1. Outdoor cafe…indoors. 2. Boots for sale at "Cowboys and Angels" in the Magnolia lobby. 3. Orchid. Real! 4. Map: one of dozens. 5. Dining on the balcony…indoors.