Centennial Park, Nashville Tennessee

Our second and last day in Tennessee started out with us visiting the Athena Parthenon in Centennial park.

The younger two boys, in particular, just could not wait to get there.  As soon as we found out that a replica existed in Nashville they said "we HAVE to go there!"  

We listened to our last Percy Jackson book as we drove and by the time we parked the younger two were playing out the books.

It's quite an impressive sight!

The Parthenon is two floors and the first floor has a few hallways dedicated to the history of both the original Parthenon and Nashville's re-make.

The Parthenon was built as part of a fair in the 1890's and was never meant to last more than the duration of the fair.  

There are artifacts on display and the boys particularly liked the case devoted to the filming of the Percy Jackson book-- complete with magic pearl, script and photos.  

The rest of the first floor is a regular old art museum that the boys were not at all interested in (but we made them at least walk through it anyway).

The second floor holds a 42 foot statue of Athena!

She's gold, tall, and filled with images and symbolism.

There are displays around Athena explaining the various parts of the statue and the importance of them.  She hold a 6 foot statue of Nike in her hand and her shield in the other.  Her shield is decorated with pictures of gods, goddesses and heroes and we found a full scale diagram depicting who they each are.  She stands on a platform that is also decorated with gods and goddesses and has a picture of Medusa on the front of her dress.

 She's quite impressive!

Behind Athena is a small room filled with a small scale replica of the end caps and various statue pieces. 

 

Alec and Evan walking up to the Parthenon

The boys kept calling these "the God doors."
Look how huge they are!

A close up picture of Nike

Athena's shield drawing depicting all the gods and goddesses around

A room showing the end caps of the Parthenon up close

The other end- both picture are different and show different Gods

Evan loves Griffins and loved how big this one was!  



On closer inspection we see her crown is held up by Pegasus and the sphinx

The front of the Parthenon

 Since it only took about an hour to tour the Parthenon we headed over to the playground and let the boys run around and play.   Centennial park is beautiful with gardens, a pond, a steamer train, a jet engine, and lots of spaces to play.  It is huge and if it had not been such a hot July day it would have been the perfect spot to hang out, have a picnic, and explore.

But it was hot and so while the boys played my husband and I searched our phones for something else to do for the remainder of our time in Nashville.  Since it was hot we were thinking-- water! 

 We went back to the hotel, changed into swimsuits and stopped by a local Kmart to buy some new beach towels (oh, how I wished I had just packed some!).  We then headed to a local waterpark called Nashville Shores to cool off and have some fun in the water.  We floated in the lazy river, played in the wave pool and went on water slides.

The waterpark is part of a campground, situated on a beautiful lake where you can swim, try out kayaking, rent boats and jet skis, and even try your hand at their aerial obstacle/ zip line course.  We just paid and played in the waterpark for a few hours.   I have no pictures since I didn't want to bring along anything other than our towels and sunscreen but it is definitely worth checking out if you want to cool off and have fun in Nashville!


For dinner we decided to try out a restaurant called Aquarium.  It's a chain that I tend to believe is just starting out.  Similar to the Rainforest Café these restaurants are all Aquarium themed with fish everywhere, blue lit walls and ceiling, and, of course, several huge fish tanks.

We felt like we were dining under the sea and since these restaurants are only found in Tennessee, Texas and Colorado it wasn't likely we'd get the change to try them out any time soon.

The boys loved it!  We even learned about a new fish called (aptly enough!) guitar fish.  I thought it a riot that we were learning about the guitar fish while in Nashville!  Alec had never seen that species of fish before and the boys were arguing about whether it was a ray or a shark and according to our waitress the fish is a little bit of both! 

guitar fish