Vacation Day 6.5–Nashville

I’m so bummed that no one got my Percy Jackson reference yesterday.  Swearing on the River Styx??  Anyone???  Are there no other fellow geeks out there?

Everyone knows I love to read.  A lot.  Well, a lot might be an understatement.  I love all types of genres from the classics, to mysteries, to Christian novels, to science fiction, and even a good ole shootem’ up  Western.  But my most favorite category of books – young adult fantasy.  Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, Eragon, The Alchemyst, The Goose Girl, Dragon Slippers, The Gods of Manhattan, The Tapestry, Wild Magic, The Iron King, Fablehaven, Percy Jackson, and many more.  So what if they are written for teenage kids.  I don’t care.  I love them. 

So should it be a surprise to anyone that of all the places that we could have chosen to go in Nashville, I wanted to go to the replica of the Parthenon and look at the Greek Gods?  Of course not.

Because I mean, who doesn’t love a gigantic statue of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom (aka Annabeth’s mom in case you were wondering).    She’s fierce!

Really though it boils down again to my love of history and since it is unlikely that I’ll ever get a chance to go to Greece, why not a enjoy a little piece of it here in good ole USA.

The pediments at each end of the Parthenon depict a scene from Greek Mythology.  The East Pediment shows the birth of Athena.  Apparently Zeus had a major headache and so he asked his son Hephaetus to hit his head with a hammer and his head split open and out jumped a fully grown Athena dressed to hilt in battle gear.  Rather interesting way to have a child, don’t you think?

They were of course surrounded by family and friends for the event.

The legends of all of the paganistic Greek gods are fascinating, but the history of the replica of the Parthenon itself is pretty interesting too.   It was originally built in Nashville for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exhibition (essentially a state fair).  That must have been one amazing State Fair!  It was built of simple wood and plaster and was only meant to be a temporary building for the exhibition.  But the people of Nashville loved it so much, that in the 1930s they decided to make it a more permanent structure.   And so the Parthenon replica was born.

We had actually arrived in Nashville the evening before our little visit to the Parthenon.  While there, Nathan used his phone to look up on Yelp a good restaurant close to our hotel to try.  He found this random place called “Mediterranean Cuisine”.  Not exactly the most inspiring of names, but the reviews were good so we decided to try it out.  As a result, I have now discovered that I cannot live my life without falafel.  I’ve had falafel before, but nothing that tasted as good as it did at this place.  I fell so in love with it that I even tried to make some last Friday.  But…it was only average.  Good, but not amazing like that place.  So now I’m on the hunt for the perfect falafel recipe.  So if you have one – please share!!!!!!!!!!