Squeezing it all in!

Ahh!! Music city! The home of country music, southern cooking, and… the WiCyS conference! Women in Cybersecurity, or WiCyS, started in Nashville in 2013 by Dr. Ambareen Siraj through a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Tennessee Tech University. Over the past ten years, WiCyS has grown to be thousands of members and holds yearly conferences in various states. Because this year was the tenth anniversary, the conference was held in its inaugural city at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. As part of the WiCyS organization, I was a part of something bigger than myself. I am a cybersecurity professional by day, and you guessed it! Blogger by night so you get to take this journey with me as I navigated between conference activities and sightseer.

My journey started at the crack of dawn to catch my 630am flight from Philly to Nashville. (Shoutout to TSA Precheck for a quick and smooth walk-through airport security.) I arrived in Nashville around 0730 to deep country accents and country music. I mean it is music city! A 10-minute walk to the ride share area and I hopped in my Lyft to the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.

I highly recommend Lyft Pink if you plan to use Lyft a lot. It is their priority membership plan for about $10 plus tax a month. It saved me a lot of waiting time throughout this trip.

Pulling up to this massive beast of a place, I could not even take enough pictures to show the immaculate site! I mean look at the picture to the right. They had plants in the rotating entrance!

Walking in the entrance, you are met with a grand ball room type entrance. If it weren’t for the chairs and tables for waiting guests, it would be a great set up for a ballroom dance in my opinion because of the tall pillars and nice marble floors. The outside world no longer exists as you make your way through the lobby. It’s a breath of fresh air and comfort. As you walk past the registration desk, you walk into a botanical garden of plants, water falls, and ponds of water. This section is called the Cascades. Further past that up an escalator you walk into what feels like a scene out of a New Orleans movie. The set up is made to feel like the rooms with the balconies are overlooking a southern backyard filled with a gazebo, weeping willows and other beautiful southern plants. You can sit there for hours and feel like you are outside in the garden with a cool breeze blowing sipping tea like a proper southern woman (alcoholic beverage for the gentlemen, maybe?). This section is properly named Magnolia.

In the Delta section, it is decorated as if you are downtown in a small town. The Gaylord comes complete with a water park I liken to a Great Wolf Lodge where there are inside and outside slides and pools.  There is a riverboat tour ride that take you around Delta area giving history of the hotel, an ice cream shop, and other small souvenir shops. Despite all this beautiful scenery, the average rooms are decorated like a typical hotel room. I am not sure if there are specialty rooms that are decorated differently though. My room was in the Magnolia section, and I was sharing a room with a colleague.

Because I was in Nashville for the WiCyS conference I really did not get a change to explore much on the day of arrival (Thursday). I did get to eat at two of the restaurants inside the resort for lunch and dinner. For lunch, I ate at Cascades American Cafe and got the grilled chicken with a regular bun (it usually comes with a Jalapeno Cheddar Bun) with a side of fries and a Pompeii The Pompeii consisted of Cocchi Rosa, Limoncello, Pomegranate and Sicilian Lemonade. (Being around a mass of people makes me nervous, so the drink was to take the edge off.) The food was decent, and I paid around $50 to include tip.

After a day of conference workshops, I had dinner with about 10 of my colleagues at the Jack Daniels restaurant . I wasn’t very hungry so all I ordered was the Brisket Quesadilla under the Starters section of the menu and some type of Jack Daniels lemonade. The service there was subpar and by the time I got my food it was not very warm and very greasy. I was so upset I forgot to take a picture of it. I only ate half as to not waste it, but I did not want to even take it back to my room. It was not very busy, so there was no excuse as to why it took so long to get our food. My colleagues were disappointed with their food as well and when talking to the manager they seemed to not acknowledge the issue.

After a not-so-great experience at Jack Daniels, a few of my colleagues and I went to the Wine Bar down by Solario Cantina for a night cap. The atmosphere was like a small lounge and nice for intimate conversations. Of course, my colleagues and I talked about the bad service at jack Daniels Lol, but we had a great conversation recapping the workshops at the conference. It was a great ending to the first day as we all retired to our rooms to prepare for the next day.

Day two of the conference for me was very busy because I volunteered to assist in various aspects of the conference. I won’t go into details of the conference because you should participate next year in Dallas, Texas wink but I will share with you my late-night adventure. I went on a "Murder in Music City" Night-Time Ghost Walking Tour in the heart of the city. I took a Lyft to downtown Nashville and the tour group met at the State Capital

building around 9pm. The tour lasted about an hour and a half. The tour guide, Evan, was very knowledgeable and made it a good experience for those of us who like to learn the history of things. He talked about past president deaths and hauntings and legalized prostitution (oh my!) The only true “murder” part of the tour was at the end, but I won’t tell you what is was because you should go on the tour! Just beware at the beginning of the tour there were a lot of stairs! Lol

Day three was a wrap up of the conference and saying goodbye to connections old and new until the next year. I moved to a different hotel because I was staying an additional day outside of the conference. Hotel Preston Nashville Airport is roughly five minutes from Nashville International Airport. I strategically picked this hotel to maximize my last day in Nashville. It was about $180 for the night but it was because it was so close to the airport. The room was nothing special for a king bed option. It was clean and I felt safe. They are currently going through renovations to make things better so maybe if I return to Nashville in the future, I can give a better review.

Once I got settled in, I had a quick dinner at the hotel’s Blackwood restaurant because I need a nap before the night’s festivities. Lol

Dinner consisted of hot chicken strips, fries, and red velvet cake. The hot chicken strips were hot! So, if you like spicy foods, they were good. I have to admit I shed a tear from the spiciness, but it was good with the ranch. The fries were basic steak fries, but the red velvet cake was good. After a quick nap, I showered and got dressed for another night adventure- Nashville Biggest & Wildest Party Public Tractor Tour!

I took a Lyft to the Nashville Tractor place and when I arrived, I was like ‘Am I at the right place?’ The entrance is an entry way through a wooden fence and very conspicuous. I slowly walked through the fence and breathed a sigh of relief as I realized it was gated off for privacy reasons. You are met with a large tractor to your right and as you walk down a small path way it opens up to an area of picnic tables, cornhole boards, a food truck and a building which holds a small souvenir shop and bar. The music is jumping and gets you in the mood for the main event- the tractor ride. The tractor I was on was named Bocephus Lol The DJ was in the front of the wagon and there was a small bar in the back. The seats were aligned along the sides of the wagon, but no one sat down. We were too busy dancing!

The tractor went through the downtown area of Nashville and half way through we stopped at the Nissan Stadium home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. After a 15-minute stop to take pictures and stretch, it was back to dancing the night away. We arrived back at the starting point around 11pm tired and full of drinks. I safely made it back to my hotel room and wined down with a shower and the Golden Girls tv show until I fell asleep.

Day four I slept in a bit because the past few days had been exhausting. I got myself ready for the day and headed to the Belmont Mansion located on the Belmont University Campus. I chose this place because it seemed like another interesting historical place. General admission is $18, and a tour guide gives you about a 20-minute synopsis of history on the mansion before you are allowed to explore on your own. The mansion is not very big, and I was able to get through everything in about 30 minutes as I took my time to take pictures and read the information. I spent about an hour there overall which is about average according to the website. I sat under the gazebo in the yard waiting for my Lyft and enjoyed the cool breeze. It is a place you could sit for a while and enjoy the scenery.

This next place I chose for the wine tasting portion of the tour. I did not pay attention to the fact that it was a plantation, and I am not big on visiting plantations. Just my personal preference, but I gave it a chance. My tour at the Belle Meade Historic Site & Winery did not

start until 2pm and I had arrived a little over an hour before. This place is slightly hidden among a neighborhood so if you were not from the area, you would not know it was there. I checked in at the welcome center/souvenir shop and proceeded to check out the grounds before the tour. Most of the buildings are remnants or replicas of the actual places such as the smokehouse and slave cabin. I grabbed lunch at their Fox Run Café because I had not eaten breakfast. I had a chicken Caesar wrap, a bag of plain chips and water as it was in the 70s and kind of hot for a cool weather person such as myself. The wrap did not have a lot of meat on it and was mostly lettuce and bread for $20, but it curbed my hunger. The tour consisted of a tour of the main house. We walked through the various rooms of the house and the tour guide, Will, talked about the history of each room. About 60% of the artifacts in the house is original to the house and they continue to gain more of the original items as descendants donate them. The interesting part of the tour for me were the two slaves that were able to become successful after they were freed. Bob Green was a prominent hostler and was one of the highest paid blacks in 1879. When he passed away people from all walks of life attended his funeral. Susanna Carter was the head of the housekeeping duties. After she was freed, she went on to win prizes for her blackberry wine.

The wine tasting consisted of four wines ranging from dry to sweet. My favorites were the blackberry and the Red Muscadine. To be honest, I cannot remember the names of the other two we tried. I only made note of the ones I liked. The blackberry was sweet and smooth and great for a dessert wine. The Red Muscadine was memorable because it had an indescribable stink, but it was really good. It tasted like cranberries to me.

The next adventure was to Madame Tussauds Nashville. It was located inside the Opry Mills Mall and with my military discount I paid about $21. Now y’all can go ahead and laugh at me, but I felt like this place was kind of creepy. Yes! I’m weird because I can go on ghost tours all day long, but something about this museum made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if it was me reliving a past trauma from visiting the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore as a kid or what, but I could not for the life of me get too close to the wax figures without feeling like they were going to come to life and scare the h-e-double hockey sticks out of me! You can see in the pic even Prince was judging me Lol I managed to make it through and take a few pictures, but I tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. (Laugh all you want Lol)

To calm my nerves, I went to the restaurant across the hall from Madam Tussauds. Aquarium: An Underwater Dining Adventure is just like it sounds. As you enter the restaurant, you walk through a semi tunnel aquarium filled with various fish and opens up to a semi dark restaurant with aquarium walls. It literally feels like you are underwater in an aquarium. It was semi-filled with customers, but since I was alone, I chose to sit at the bar.

The bar was lit with blue wave neon lights. I sat end the corner of the bar to get a full view of the place. It was a pretty chill atmosphere. I ordered fried alligator bites as my appetizer, the fried seafood platter consisting of fried fish, oysters, shrimp, a stuffed crab, fries and coleslaw and the Watermelon Lit. (Hey! I’m on a semi vacation. Don’t judge me Lol)

Everything was good except the stuffed crab. There really wasn’t a lot of crab meat, mostly bread. (I’m a Maryland Native so I am somewhat of a crab snob Lol) I was pleasantly surprised that I liked the gator bites even though I had them before in New Orleans. Overall, this was a nice lunch/dinner to end my trip in Nashville. I headed to the airport after this and said goodbye to Nashville until I visited again.

I think I got to experience some good things considering I was really there for a conference. What do you think?

Disclaimer: I, Artilya Key, also known as A. Key (A Key To Adventure), am not affiliated with any of the links, places or sites mentioned in this blog nor did I receive any compensation for this post. Should you need more information, please refer to the linked information or contact the company or entities. Any copywritten information belongs to that entity and is not associated with A Key To Adventure.