Sydney's grand old "opry" House

Sydney, Australia - Day 2 (blogging from our hotel room)

14 hours, 14 smours...what an easy flight! All our praise goes to Qantas Airlines for a smooth flight, comfy chairs, decent food and great entertainment including plenty of movie choices and the Australian comedy hit soon to be Americanized, Kath and Kim...freaking hilarious. We touched down as the sun was coming up over Aussie-land. Customs was a breeze and the cab ride downtown was quiet in the early Sunday morning hours. We checked our bags at the Four Seasons Hotel. Before all the "well, la tee da"-s begin, it's not as fancy as you think. We are staying on a buy two get one free special and we have stayed in nicer places (I say Bellagio and Ashlee says Ritz Carlton). They promised us we could get in the room around 10 AM. So with a couple hours to kill before we could take a much-anticipated shower, we strolled around Sydney Harbor with very few people around. We met a nice couple from New Zealand who were "weekending" in Sydney and we each took the others' picture with the famous Sydney Opera House in the background. Just as inspiring as the Opera House is the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It's massiveness and architectural beauty are hard to ignore. Sydney is a beautiful city with tons of greenery and amazingly cool buildings and quirky little streets and alleys full of neat stores, eateries and pubs. After our morning stroll, we headed back for our showers and a short nap before venturing out again. This time we headed for the Opera House and stopped for lunch with a view of the Harbor Bridge. We roamed around the Opera House grounds and we were surprised to see it actually is composed of three different buildings and not one large structure as most of the pictures you see seem to indicate. We continued our afternoon walk around the Circular Quay of Sydney Harbor and finished with a stroll through the incredibly beautiful, incredibly large and incredibly FREE Sydney Botanical Gardens. Great first day in Australia ended with a pint of western Australian Pale Ale called Little Creatures and an interesting sparkling Grant Burge Pinot Noir Chardonnay (see our new wine and beer blogs) http://seerobsbeerblog.blogspot.com/ http://robandashleewine.blogspot.com/ consumed in our room with a view of Sydney's grand old "opry" House here on the other side of the world.

R.I.P. --- Saturday, August 23, 2008 --- We never knew ya...

Day 2 - sort of - Thanks to the International Date Line we take off from LA on Friday, August 22 at 10:30 P.M. and land 14 hours later in Sydney where it will be 6 AM on Sunday, August 24. We hope everyone enjoyed their Saturday that we lost. Let us know how it was.

We love LA....sort of...

LA & Hollywood, CA - Friday, August 22nd - Posted from LAX on the way to Australia - Day 1 Los Angeles is smoggy, dirty, busy and not much to look at. Hollywood was less smoggy, less dirty, still busy, but sure had plenty to look at and is definitely worth coming again when we can spend more time here. We found cheap valet parking just around the corner from where our 10 AM Hollywood Blvd. walking tour started which was a surprise since we were expecting to pay out the nose. The Walk of Fame stars were everywhere you looked (photo above). Our tour guide, Mick, was a friendly Brit who was a former Beefeater Guard at the Royal Palace in London. His story of how he got from there to Hollywood was, a little strange and of course, involved a woman who is now his wife. Although the tour was a bit short (or seemed so at one hour), it was very informative and chock full of Hollywood nuggets of history, insider details and the comings and goings of stars and starlets all around this little town in the hills of L.A. Despite all the glitz and glamour that is "Hollywood" it's still business as usual in this town including the fact that such a famous star as the one above would be situated in front of a busy McDonald's. We spent the afternoon down the coast a ways visiting Ashlee's boss, Michelle, and her family. Much thanks to them for showing us a great time in such a brief period including a visit to beautiful Laguna Beach. We have now made it back to LAX and are sitting in the terminal waiting to board that "big old jet airliner."

"with a 50-cent [Phoenix Hill] lighter and a [Maker's Mark] whiskey buzz"...

The words of Scott Miller & the Commonwealth's "I Made a Mess of This Town" never rang truer [for the most part] than describing our weekend trip to Louisville to see the boys as well as those Texas twangers, The Gougers, who opened the show at the legendary Phoenix Hill Tavern (Happy Birthday PHT - 32 years and going strong).

This was our first visit to this river city icon and we were pretty impressed. The acoustics were good in "The Saloon" part of this multi-level, multi-room, multi-themed nightclub.

Both groups put on great shows. We gave the edge to Scott and the boys (photo above) since his performance seemed to improve when fueled by some of that world-class Kentucky bourbon whiskey. We were up close and personal again with both bands not only during their performances but afterward as well when Jamie from The Gougers sat at our front row table for a couple of songs after her set to see Scott and the boys do their thing. We also both talked to Scott during and after his performance. Well, it was more like we "love-heckled" him during the show when Ashlee implied early on out loud that Scott hated babies and he asked that she please "stop stealing his jokes" and then late in the show when Rob was introduced to the crowd by Scott as "The Human Kazoo" just before he brought out the actual instrument for his great new song, "People Rule."

http://www.thescottmiller.com/scottmillervideo.html

After the show despite our rude harrassment during his performance, Scott was a big enough person to speak with us cordially as he signed a copy of his new acoustic EP of the upcoming SM&TC album "Appalachian Refugee" for us. It's gonna be a good one! Fire in the hole!! Before arrving in Louisville we also made a stop along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail at the tiny village of Laretto to visit the Maker's Mark Distillery. Beautiful grounds, interesting free tour and a nice tasting room/gift shop (photo above) made for a nice detour. While we both can appreciate the effort and craftmanship it takes to make their bourbon whisky (not a typo - there's no "E" - that's how they spell it - check the bottle), it's just not our "cup of hooch." We will stick with the beer and wine I guess...and that's probably enough.

Christmas in July with Larry the Cable Guy

We scored a couple of free tix to attend the live taping of "Larry the Cable Guy's Star-Studded Christmas Extravaganza" special at TPAC in Nashville for CMT that will begin airing in late November (the 22nd to be exact) and then coming out for sale on DVD just in time for Christmas this year. It was quite enjoyable with great comedy, good music and a rapid pace despite being filmed (i.e. there were very few do-overs). Larry's low-brow humor has always been kind of a guilty pleasure for us, so it was great to see him live and he did not disappoint whether the camera was rolling or not. Live guest appearances included singing legend, Tony Orlando (he and Larry are a strange comedic combination together but it works); comedian/actor Fred Willard (of Best in Show and Everybody Loves Raymond fame); SNL veteran, Victoria Jackson; Joey Fatone (of n'Sync and Dancing with the Stars fame, but we loved him in My Big Fat Greek Wedding); country music duo Montgomery Gentry played a couple of songs including their Robert Earl Keen, Jr. cover of the hilarious "Merry Christmas from the Family" (very appropriate for this type of show), another Christmas song by young country star, Rodney Atkins; and the amazing singing ventriloquist, Terry Fator.

It's Key West...with Mountains

Year 3 of our yearly jaunt to beautful Asheville, North Carolina, for their annual Bele Chere Festival is now in the books and it was another great trip. This was the 30th anniversary for this wonderful (basically free) festival held in downtown Asheville every last weekend of July. And we do mean "downtown. " They block off dozens of their main streets for this event and stick music stages at the end of several of them (photo above) along with crafts, food vendors, etc. tucked in every nook and cranny. The real beauty of this festival is that it embraces dozens of unique downtown stores and restaurants and most of them stay open for the festival and don't gouge their prices during it either...in fact some of them run really great bargains (Ashlee bought a couple of really nice tops in a small retail store)...and the biggest bargain of all is....BEER. There is an amazing array of beer for sale (domestics, imports, hand-crafted local microbrews) and they can be consumed while walking down the streets enjoying the festival, or sitting on a restaurant patio watching the crowds go by. The prices never exceeded $4 that we could find and the bargain of the night came late when we followed a suggestion to check out the "Weingarten Store" who were selling huge pints of English ale for $2. (photo below - Ashlee's cell phone has been placed beside one of these monster beers for scale). We listened to some great sets of music by "13 Stories" and "Cowboy Mouth" who have an incredible amount of energy onstage. We ate dinner during the festival at a downtown vegetarian spot called "The Laughing Seed." Rob's skepticism quickly passed (besides the fact that they had a locally-brewed IPA on tap for $3.50 a glass) when the delicious food arrived and filled us up quickly. Despite the amount of beer flowing and the big crowds, the festival always feels very safe for all ages. There isn't a ton of security at least visible either, but the reasoning is probably more about attitude. In our opinion, Asheville is "Key West with Mountains." There is a laid-back feeling in this little city hidden in the mountains very similar to Key West, another of our favorite places to visit, which is kind of "hidden" way down at the end of Florida. Folks in Asheville and Key West just seem to "get it," They know how to enjoy themselves and life without bothering their neighbor. They share a love for life that just seems to come without much effort at all. We woke up Sunday morning just in time to have brunch at the very popular West End Cafe in W. Asheville near the university. This local institution is great and their homemade pimento cheese pannini's are to die for. After another great meal in Asheville we headed a few miles north to Whisper Mountain to take a look the Southern Living Idea House on display there. The house was stunning and the fact that it and the new development it was built in are every eco-friendly and "green" made it all the more amazing. We cruised on eastward (make that WESTward - thanks Craig, edited 7/28) after that through the mountains and wound up in Cookeville, TN, right about dinner time. Wanting to continue our streak of great eats we found "Crawdaddies" near the square which had been recommended by our friend, Woody, and Woody was right on the money. What a great little restaurant and the food was superb. Authentic jambalaya and garlic shrimp were the choices and the were both exceptional. Great weekend, great food, great beer, great time.

Buzz on the Lawn

Beachhaven Winery - Jazz on the Lawn - Clarksville, TN - Saturday, July 19th, 2008

Meet-up.com strikes again as Ashlee found a wine-lovers group who were getting together a bus to take to Clarksville for the Beachhaven Winery's Jazz on the Lawn. $22 each got us a comfortable seat on a nice clean little van/bus driven by Albert (what a nice guy), round-trip transportation, some complimentary wine and finger foods and ton a comraderie. We arrived early before the music started to grab a good spot on the lawn in front of the stage since this is a very popular event, and then made our first Beachhaven wine purchase of the evening, the Viognier (pronounced Vee - Own - Yay). It's a dry chardonnay-like white wine with excellent flavor made from the grape of the same name. We ended the evening with another dry white purchase, the Seyval Blanc. Much drier than the Viognier with a nice green apple flavor. The music wasn't anything to write a blog about but it made for a nice background for good conversation among the group. Most of the group descended on a nearby Waffle House when we arrived back in Nashville because nothing goes better together than snooty Tennessee wine and some covered and smothered.