Tennessee Trip - Day 2

So when we last left our intrepid travelers they were pulling into Nashville around 6:00 Saturday night.  Well not exactly Nashville - our hotel was in Mt. Juliet which is about 20 miles east of town.

Since we got in at a decent hour we went ahead and checked into the hotel before dinner.  Turns out Mt. Juliet is a rapidly growing area around Nashville and as such there was a ton of stuff right near our hotel room.  We wanted to find someplace "unique", but Xander really wanted pizza.  The only pizza joint we could really find was a New York style pizza place and Paula and I both dislike New York style so that was out.  In the end we ended up going to a blah chain restaurant with o.k. food. Not exactly a meal to remember but there it is.  Looking for a place to eat exposed us to a lot of what to expect in Mt. Juliet, and we went ahead and picked up a Apartment Guide to see if any might be open Sunday we could investigate.

After breakfast we got a "semi" early start to the day, we had a lot to do and still wanted to get to Decatur for dinner.  We wanted to see how Nashville worked and explore Murfreesboro, Hermitage, Gallatin, Lebanon and Mt. Juliet.

• Murfreesboro was o.k.  The town looked like he had most of what we would want and they were some nice apartments as well.  The problem with the town was location.  Most of the areas we were looking at were east of Nashville, while Murfreesboro is more southern.  Means my drive in would be 1:20, Paula's would be about 35 minutes.  By far the longest drive times for both of us.
• Hermitage was o.k. as well.  It is the closest city to Nashville that we looked at, but it is ... old.  Most of the apartments were built in the 70's or 80's and so had some issues.  
• Gallatin was a definite no.  Hard to get to, city looked run down, just over all a bad feeling. 
• Lebanon was o.k. depending on where you were looking.  Apparently it is a big enough city that 3 different exits off of I-40 lead to the town and one of the exits had a nice looking development.
• Mt. Juliet was the clear winner with everyone.  They had a really cool park that Xander loved, good shopping, great school districts and hopefully some apartments coming available.  

After checking out the apartments (and a few housing developments) we went to downtown Nashville and got a quick feel for that.  Xander was impressed by the football stadium and I liked the size of the town (though the streets did seem to remind me of north Atlanta).  

So who wins?  Nashville, Mt. Juliet and hopefully us.