Why Nashville Is Perfect for a Girls’ Trip: 5 Things We Loved

I love my family.

I also love getting on a plane without them.

Both things can be true.

A few years ago, my best friend and I took a girls’ trip to Nashville, Tennessee, and looking back, what I remember most isn’t any one restaurant or attraction. It’s having uninterrupted time with my friend to eat, laugh, explore a new city, learn something, stay out late, and only be responsible for ourselves for a few days.

There is something very different about traveling with your girlfriends.

And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that making room for those relationships and experiences isn’t something I should feel guilty about squeezing into an already-full life.

They are part of my life too.

If you’re planning a Nashville girls’ trip, here are five experiences that made ours worth taking.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of my links, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Travel has always been one of my favorite ways to step outside of the everyday routine and make room for experiences I’ll actually remember. Sometimes that looks like a girls’ weekend in Nashville, and sometimes it’s a family trip, a romantic getaway, or simply exploring a new city. If you’re planning your next escape, you might also enjoy my tips for planning a successful trip, my El Conquistador hotel review, our family fun at Navy Pier, or my Glasbern Inn review. There’s room for more than one kind of trip around here.

1. Eat the Nashville Hot Chicken

You cannot go to Nashville and completely ignore hot chicken.

At least we couldn’t.

Nashville hot chicken is exactly what it sounds like: fried chicken coated in a spicy seasoning that ranges from pleasantly hot to questioning every decision that led you to this moment.

And naturally, you have to determine who in the group thinks she can handle the hottest level.

Places like Prince’s Hot Chicken and Hattie B’s have become synonymous with Nashville hot chicken, so this is an easy meal to build into your itinerary.

Personally, I think food is one of the best parts of traveling with friends anyway. Half of the experience is eating something good. The other half is talking about the meal for the next three hours.

What to Pack for Nashville

This is also a natural place to think about what you’ll actually need for the trip. Nashville involves plenty of walking, sightseeing, eating, and going out, so I would prioritize:

• Cowboy boots (everyone is wearing them)
• Cowboy hat
• A crossbody or belt bag
• Portable phone charger
• Refillable water bottle
• A few easy outfits that can transition from daytime sightseeing to dinner

Affiliate opportunity: Link the sneakers, travel bag, portable charger, or other travel staples you actually use.

2. Visit the National Museum of African American Music

One of the experiences I would absolutely recommend adding to a Nashville itinerary is the National Museum of African American Music.

The museum explores the influence African Americans have had across American music, including gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.

And this is one of the reasons I enjoyed Nashville so much.

A girls’ trip doesn’t have to mean choosing between having fun and doing something interesting. We can go out, eat good food, laugh until our stomachs hurt and spend part of the trip somewhere that teaches us something.

I actually prefer trips that have a little bit of both.

Give me dinner reservations and a museum.

I contain multitudes.

3. Do Something You Can Laugh About Later

For us, that was an escape room.

We went to Escape the Trap and attempted to figure our way out together, which is exactly the kind of activity that reveals entirely too much about everyone’s personality.

There is the person trying to solve everything.

The person convinced she found a clue that is absolutely not a clue.

The person touching things she was specifically told not to touch.

And eventually somebody is just ready to ask for help.

Those are the experiences I love on a girls’ trip because they give you stories that survive long after the vacation is over.

You don’t necessarily need to book the exact activity we did. The bigger recommendation is to put one thing on the itinerary that lets you play.

Not sightseeing. Not posing for pictures. Not going somewhere because TikTok said you should.

Something that is simply fun.

Adults don’t do enough of that.

4. Take the Journey to Jubilee Tour at Belle Meade

This was my favorite experience of the trip, although “favorite” feels inadequate because this wasn’t a lighthearted stop.

The Journey to Jubilee tour at Belle Meade focuses on the African Americans who were enslaved at and later worked on the property.

Historic estates can easily tell stories centered on beautiful houses, wealthy families, architecture and land while treating the people whose forced labor sustained those places as background characters.

I appreciated having an opportunity to hear a fuller story.

The experience asked us to sit with the lives of the Black men, women and children connected to Belle Meade, including their labor, families, resilience and experiences before and after emancipation.

It was a very different part of our Nashville trip than eating hot chicken or going out on Broadway.

But it belonged there.

Joy and reflection aren’t opposites.

I can spend part of a trip laughing with one of my closest friends and another part learning about people whose stories deserve to be remembered.

I don’t need every moment of a vacation to have the same emotional tone for the trip to be meaningful.

5. Experience Broadway at Night

And then there is Broadway.

If you’ve pictured Nashville as neon signs, live music pouring out of bars, people dancing and an entire street that feels like one big party, this is where you’ll find it.

Broadway is loud.

It is crowded.

It is a lot.

And with the right friends, that’s part of the fun.

We explored the honky-tonk scene, listened to live music and experienced the side of Nashville that earned it the Music City nickname.

Would I want to do this every night of my life?

Absolutely not.

Did I want to do it with my best friend while we were in Nashville?

Absolutely.

There are seasons for being home in comfortable clothes watching television, and there are nights for putting on an outfit and going out.

I enjoy both.

Why You Should Take the Girls’ Trip

Looking back at this trip now, this is probably the part that means more to me than it did when I originally wrote about it.

There will always be reasons not to go.

Schedules are complicated. Travel costs money. Somebody has something happening at home. Work is busy. The kids have activities. Finding a weekend when everyone’s calendar magically aligns can feel like trying to solve another escape room.

But friendships deserve time too.

And you deserve experiences that aren’t entirely attached to what you do for everybody else.

That is becoming a much bigger part of what “doing it all” means to me.

It isn’t doing everything.

It’s refusing to let responsibility take up every available inch of your life.

Sometimes you make room for dinner with your girlfriends. Sometimes it’s a few hours together. And sometimes you book the flight to Nashville.

Years later, I don’t remember what was sitting on my to-do list when I left.

I remember the trip.

Take the girls’ trip.