Location: Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Happy happy birthday to Katisse!! It’s sadly our last day in Nashville, but when I asked Kat what she wanted to do for her birthday and our last day all she said was ‘I’m just happy spending time with you.’

I’m not crying, there’s just something in my eye!

We hadn’t properly explored east Nashville, so we taxied over for brunch and some perusing. Wartime houses with covered porches gave way to offbeat shops and cafés covered in street art, where eventually 5 streets merged into an intersection aptly named 5 Point.

The forecast was calling for a severe thunderstorm so we hustled to the nearest café, Bongo, to hole up. It was a pleasant surprise that it turned out to be a board game café that also conveniently served single slices of cake! I sang a totally not-embarrassing rendition of Happy Birthday while we set up a game of Azul, Queen’s Garden. We spent the entire afternoon drinking tea, eating cake and playing games while lightning lit up the sky and the rain poured down in absolute buckets. It was perfect.

When evening rolled around we made our way downtown for a dinner reservation at Husk, which had been recommended to us by someone on the plane on the way here. Yesterday I joked about the fancy-pants seafood place we ate dinner at, but this was properly fancy. Like… could qualify as fine-dining kind of place. The restaurant refurbished an old 1880’s brick manor home that used to belong to the mayor, and now serves reimagined classic southern food.

When we arrived they took us through the house along creaky wooden floors, into one of the rooms turned dining areas. Think of a whole house, but almost every room is a dining room. Our room had high ceilings with crown moulding, mirrors on the walls and beautiful yellow embroidered curtains on the tall windows that overlooked the lush green street. The warm light and good music really set the tone for a lovely evening as they handed us custom printed birthday menus. I rarely eat fine-dining type food like this but when I do I often wonder if it’s worth the money, there’s just so little of it! Also cheap street food is often tastier… so really, what’s the point?

Not this place. Husk was absolutely 100% worth it and so delicious I would have licked my plate if I was allowed to. We had pimento cheese ball, poblano dashi catfish with clams, bbq tarragon quail with sweet corn and a side of buttermilk biscuits. All of which were fancied up in ways I do not understand in the slightest.

One last thing I really wanted to do was try Tennessee whiskey, and what better place than a nice restaurant, right? I’m not a big fan of whiskey, but my friend Ian is and is always trying to get me to like it, so I figured it would be cool to say that I had a glass here. Well… one single 42$ ounce of honey brown whiskey from Nelson Bros distillery later and I’m just absolutely dying. I wanted this! I am drinking this! I am trying not to choke or embarrass myself but every sip is like $5 of straight up spine shivers. I am doing it. At this point it’s about principle!

I did it! At least Kat got some laughs out of it.

We headed home to pack as we both have an ass o’clock flight out in the morning, and we wanted to eke out as much time together as we possibly could before we say our goodbyes. Packing complete, we sat toe to toe to eat a pint of Jenni’s ice cream, which couldn’t have been a better end not only to the day but to the whole trip.

Until the next adventure!

Sav