Thursday, December 04, 2008

Opryland, Part II

Part I was here.

First, let me say that "Opry" is has a short O and is pronounced "opp-ree". As in "opera", but with an "ee". Not "oh-pree" as in "Oprah". Yeah - I never knew that. Silly American pronounciations ;)

So, first night we had dinner in one of the maybe dozen resturants in the Hotel, followed up with ice cream from the Hagen Daaz store in the Hotel. Did I say yet that this Hotel is huge?



The next morning we left the Hotel, and walked about 10 minutes to the Grand Ole Opry House (remember, sounds like opera). Home of Country Music! Dad would have loved it, but we were not there for music. Oh no - we were there for dancing! The Rockettes infact, in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Lots of leg-kicking action. It was pretty good, with Santa leading the story. Until, at least they got to the Nativity scene tacked on to the end. Oh man, was that dull! It was really disjointed from the rest of the show - no leg-kicking action at all - and really felt as if they had added it just to counter the consumerism of the rest of the show "Hey, look. We really are good Christians! Not just consumers, no sireee!" To be expected, right here in the buckle of the Bible belt. (Click here for the real "reason for the season". Tee hee.)

After the show, we had lunch at the Aquarium restaurant in the Opry Mills Mall [why is everything around here called Opry?] just over the street. Yes - it was a big aquarium with food. Callum loved the Shovelnose guitarfish. But I will give you a picture of him (and Theresa) instead.



Then we headed to see the Grinch in Ice!



Yes - we all wore blue coats. They gave them out when you went in. The temperature inside was a balmy 7 degrees... farenheit. That is -14 Celsius. Brrr. But what do you expect - it was ice! A bunch of (very good) ice sculptures of the Grinch and the Whos. And slides...



[That is Lexie, in case you can't tell!]

Did I say it was cold? Guess who this is:



Because after about 20 min inside, we all looked pretty much the same. Luckily, they had hot chocolate on sale right outside. [Just like Disney, everything landed you in a gift shop].

OK - that was most of Saturday. At night, I sat with the kids in the room and had room service and watched Kung Fu Panda on pay-per-view. Very cute movie (and very expensive PPV).

Sunday we did the hall of trees and made a gingerbread house. See Part III for details!

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