It was here:
http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordopryland/meetings/
And here are some pictures:
http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylordopr ... allery.cfm
The banner at the top of the page in the first link has all the holiday decorations as they are lit up in it. It was amazing.
The reason that I was there was that there was a conference where I was co-presenting a paper that a co-worker and I wrote. It was a nice place to have something like that. The only gripes I had were that the customer service sucked donkey nads, and everything was expensive. For example, you want a pop and you don't want to drive down the road to the gas station? You're gonna pay 1.50, for a can; it was 2.50 for a bottle.
But, it was a good trip. I got to get away from work. Nashville reminds me of southwestern Washington State. And the conference went smoothly. There were many other Air Force folks there, and several of them went to my presentation. They liked what they saw. Plus, it was nice having a Colonel in the audience who knew what you were talking about and could ask questions and add his own thoughts even though he's outside of the program I'm on.
It was all unclassified too. So everything we brought with us was unclassified and we could talk all we wanted about that stuff. It makes a talk easier when you have many options to talk about. It's better than having to say something like, "the answer to that question involves classified material and is not appropriate for this forum".
So, if you ever go to Nashville, and have plenty of cash to spend, then that place is not bad. The rooms are at a decent price for what you get (about 120 bucks a night if you're not getting the government rate). And the food is good although expensive. And during the holidays it's definitely a place to go with a significant other. Plus, there isn't a whole lot of country music, just a lot of southern accents that I had to get used to. For example, my co-worker and I were getting some food in the morning and one of the people behind the counter sounded like boomhauer from King of the Hill, the other sounded almost as bad but had a female voice. I stood there going, "huh?" and responding with what I thought were answers to questions. My first thought was, "pull the sock out of your mouth!", my second was, "they put people you can't understand in customer service positions?". And that wasn't even a bad part of the customer service we had during our stay.
