Nashville - Day 12

Happy 4th of July!

Today, we celebrated by feasting on classic Southern homestyle cooking at Monell's! This was high on the To Do List when we arrived. Monell's was one of our favourites when we lived here, and we always brought company when they visited. For those of us not raised on meat-and-three dining, Monell's is a unique experience. You sit at a big table with strangers and share food and conversation over all-you-can-eat bowls of Southern cooking. We were there for the end of lunch and ended up at a table by ourselves - 15 bowls of food for just us! Skillet fried chicken, corn pudding, fried catfish, biscuits with peach preserves, fried green tomatoes and banana pudding were just a few of the treats. Needless to say, we didn't need supper ...

We opted for a quiet celebration tonight, enjoying neighbourhood fireworks and reflecting on the past two weeks. It's been such a whirlwind. Tonight, words like "blessed" and "grateful" are both cliché and perfectly suited to the conversation.