Old Town Trolley Tour in Nashville, TN

One of the things I’d enjoyed on my trip to San Diego in 2017 was the trolley tour, so I decided to do it again in Nashville. The same company runs the tour in both cities, but the Nashville trolleys were much larger (and quite crowded—sometimes a backup had to be sent) and more like buses with the seats being progressively elevated the further back one sits. Unlike San Diego, where the stops are quite spread out, many of the stops in Nashville were only a few blocks from each other. This came in handy when the stop in front of the Goo Goo Shop and Johnny Cash Museum ended up being skipped because of road construction. Unfortunately there were no signs indicating the stop wouldn’t be utilized. When I made the full tour run, the driver did announce the closure at the stop with the main ticket booth but with this being hop-on/off, I started in the middle. The man who redeemed my all-access pass at the ticket booth near the Ryman didn’t mention it.

Because many of the stops were so close, this tour isn’t as good of a deal for someone who wants to use it as transportation around the city. The focus really is on downtown, but I appreciated the information shared on the tour. I had no idea how severe the damage had been with the 2010 flooding. The drivers did a great job conveying how incredible the restoration has been.

One of the few non-walking distance stops is for the Belmont mansion. The mansion was undergoing renovation which closed off the upper level, but the docent related an amazing history that shouldn’t be missed by anyone wanting to learn the story of one Civil War-era family that was very much headed by a woman. Many of the pieces in the mansion including the artwork are original. The work the museum staff has done to track down those original works is remarkable.

Some of the other tour highlights are: Country Music Hall of Fame, Musicians Hall of Fame, Parthenon, and numerous bars with local musicians playing.

The stops were well-marked and the directions given on the website made it easy to find each one. Note though that there’s more than one tour company running in downtown Nashville and the stops are sometimes in the same place or very close to each other.