We walk in and out of Nashville, Tennessee

Downtown Nashville is not for us.

Welcome to Nashville, Tennessee

All I'd heard of Nashville is what you might hear on the national country music stations: it's the heart of country music!

Navigating past the bars and crowds of Nashville

But, what we found in downtown Nashville was more like a giant, suburban house party that spilled out and took over a handful of city blocks.

Countless bachelorette parties were parading through the streets like drunken ducks in a row. Some pedaled open-air bars through the streets, others cheered from inside party buses, and others navigated through the crowded streets to hop from bar to bar the old-fashioned way.

Typical day in Nashville with Hot Wing Festival cameo

As you might expect, every bar along this cliched, pop-country version of Times Square offered a live musical act. From the street, all of this Music City noise blended together to create a cacophony of cymbals, guitar chords and people shouting over each other to be heard.

This was Tennessee as we'd never seen it before, and all the crowds, the noise, the drinking - it didn't appeal to us.

We ducked into a two-level souvenir shop, and I waited in line at a crowded coffee shop, but it wasn't long after we arrived in downtown Nashville that we walked ourselves back to our parking garage and got out of there.

Joe's Crab Shack in Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville still had a few great surprises in store for us, including the Grand Ole Opry and our first homecooking-style southern meal, but those surprises wouldn't be found in this crowded downtown area.

The Tennessee Titans play just over the river from downtown Nashville

Later the next day, we popped in a second time, wandered around and checked out the bridge that led to the Tennessee Titans football stadium, but on the list of places we visited in Tennessee, downtown Nashville is at the bottom - and that part of the list is soaked in the tequila spilled from some bachelorette party's last round of shots.