Nashville - Day 2, Part 1

Day 2 of our Nashville trip took us to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. I had absolutely no idea how massive this hotel is. It is like the size of a Vegas hotel without the casino. That's big!

Passing by one of the entrances...

We knew it was going to rain in Nashville that day and it was going to rain a lot. We thought it would be a good idea to valet our car. Not so much.

 We arrived around checkout time. And the hotel was packed. And we waited 20 minutes to valet our car - no joke. Once we got into the hotel lobby, we had to wait a very long time to pick up our tickets. While Doug was standing in line, Bri and I walked around the hotel a little (it was really beautiful)...

After Bri and I walked a little, I then stood in the line so Doug could walk around a little and figure out where the "Ice" event was happening. My friend Val had visited the exhibit and said it was amazing, so we wanted to check it out.

We picked up our tickets and found out the event was in the Convention Center ~ and the concierge told us to walk outside to get there. So much for not walking in the rain - heh, grumble.

We also had purchased tickets to go snow tubing. Since it was set up outside the convention center and we knew rain was coming, we figured it would be best to start with that. It was set up under an overhang, but if the rain started blowing sideways, that wasn't really going to help us.

I went down one time and realized with my back issue, it probably wasn't something I should continue to do. Doug went with Bri a few times. She went a few times by herself.

She loved it. If you ask her what her favorite part of the trip was, she'll tell you tubing...

After tubing, we entered the convention center...

There is a corridor with lights you wind around to get to the ice room...

Visitors are given blue parkas to wear in there and I luckily brought mittens for Bri and myself. With it being warm that day, most people didn't have them. We were then told it was nine degrees inside (insert jaw dropping).

Entrance...

When we first entered, Bri spotted a panda made of ice and she was so excited...

It was really amazing to see all of these creations carved in ice (by Chinese ice carvers)...

 It was really amazing to enter the area with the ice slide...

An ice corridor...

A pink flying unicorn ~ a young girl's dream...

I'm thinking it was colder than 9 degrees in there...

Unfortunately, it was so cold in the event, my phone died toward the end of the exhibit and I couldn't take anymore pictures until it warmed up again (luckily Doug's camera phone still worked).

These are from Doug's phone...

A Chinese Dragon!!! How perfect is that? Bri was so excited! The ice carver was also working on a teddy bear...

The Nativity Scene (so beautiful)...

 And Miss B had done very well, but by the last display, her lips were turning blue and she almost started to cry because she was so cold. She was quite happy to exit the exhibit.

I absolutely recommend this event because it was really amazing to see. But next time, I would bundle up Bri a lot more because the parka didn't work well enough.

Bri cheered up super quick because the exhibit exits you out into the warm gift shop (of course). And because it was after Christmas, everything was 50 percent off. Score!

She was super excited about getting a stuffed "Ice" polar bear...