Hilton Nashville Downtown

April 5th, 2022

Enroute:

Well, when life cancels your flight twice in a row, you make a trip out of Nashville.

Our original itinerary was to fly back to NYC from Florida by way of Nashville, but we happened to be traveling on a weekend when over 3,300 flights were canceled due to bad weather and labor shortage in the post-Covid aviation industry. Long story short, we found ourselves stranded in Nashville for a couple of days.

While not ideal, I had never been to Nashville before, so we decided to spend the weekend there to explore. I had heard good things about Nashville, from country music to hot chicken and the general southern charm. I wasn’t necessarily a country music fan, but mostly because I never had much exposure to it. I felt like under the right circumstances I could be into it. So yeah, there certainly were worst places to be stuck in on a layover.

What was ridiculous was the hotel pricing for the weekend. Apparently there was some kind of songwriters’ conference? Most hotels downtown were over $500/night. I picked the Hilton Nashville Downtown because it’s right in the center of all the honky-tonks. Like you could literally go back to use your hotel bathroom in between bars. For our last minute booking, I paid 70,000 Hilton points a night. Hilton Honors is a hotel program I’m pretty agnostic about, so I don’t really have a concept of whether that was a good deal or not. For an one-bedroom suite on a busy weekend, I was okay with it.

Check-in:

The design of the hotel was very, uh, 90s? It’s been a while since I stayed at a hotel with a huge central atrium.

I don’t know how many rooms there were, but I do know there was a lot. I didn’t particularly dislike the design? Like most places in Nashville, there was live music playing when we arrived. As a matter of fact, when we were delayed at the airport, there was a band playing at one of the airport restaurants.

Check-in was efficient, and the front desk lady explained that we’d have access to the club lounge, which oddly was located on the ground floor behind the reception. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a club lounge that wasn’t on a higher floor. She also explained that there would be a happy hour with discounted beers and wines, and complimentary breakfast in the mornings.

Shortly after we were on our way to the room.

Unpack:

The elevators to the guest rooms were those glass ones facing inwards. The hotel felt like a cruise ship.

Our room was located on the 6th floor. It’s worth mentioning that the rooms on the right faced the interior of the hotel, which I would not be pleased by.

Upon entry, there was a decently sized living room with a work desk, couch and TV.

Next was the bathroom, which was spacious due to it being an ADA room and connected to both the living room and bedroom.

For a bathroom this size, a double sink would have been nice. But it is a Hilton we’re staying at, after all. There are, of course, more posh lodging options such as the Thompson Nashville or the W, both are located in a yopro neighborhood called the Gulch. Since I wanted to maximize the tourist experience on our short stay, I thought location was more important.

Lastly was the bedroom, which featured another TV and a reasonably comfortable king bed.

I thought it was a little ratchet that there’s no actual closet in the room, but maybe it had something to do with being an accessible room.

From our room you could kind of look out onto the Cumberland river, which certainly was better than looking into the hotel atrium.

The room was, fine, in my opinion. It’s a cookie-cutter convention hotel. I just want to note a few small things: the headboard showed some wear; there were some dead insects inside the bedroom window; and there was virtually no space to the left of the bed.

Unwind:

On our way to the lounge, we passed the gym. It looked okay.

Refuel:

The lounge, however, was more of a mayhem. It was extremely crowded with abysmal offering. When the front desk told me there would be discounted beer and wine for happy hour, it didn’t register with me that there would be no complimentary alcohol. But girls gotta eat (drink), so we ordered some wine, which was $5 for a very generous pour.

As you can see, there wasn’t adequate seating so this poor girl had to sit on the floor while she finished her empanadas, which was one of the two food items on offer. The other one was fried spring rolls, so yeah, healthy meal.

We didn’t stay for long, given how crowded it was. The next morning, we went back to get some coffee. I also had to get some bacon and cereal, thanks to the moonshine I had the night before. Even though I’d much rather save my appetite for some dry-rubbed barbecue and banana pudding.

Depart:

The Hilton Nashville Downtown was perfect for our unexpected layover. The location was absolutely the best selling point for somebody who doesn’t have a whole lot of time but wants to hit all of the tourist hotspots. That being said, if I were to stay longer or to return, I’d definitely stay at the Gulch area. It’s like you only want to stay somewhere on Bourbon street once, in that sense.