• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

A guest room and the South Lobby at Union Station Hotel.   (Photo: Courtesy of Union Station Hotel)

Downtown’s Beaux-Arts beauty, the Hermitage Hotel (from $260), recently spiffed up its Italian sienna-marble entryway and overhauled its plush, traditionally furnished guest rooms. After a drink or two at the downstairs Oak Bar, mosey over to the Capital Grille for a hearty Tennessee black angus steak.

Also downtown, the newly revamped Union Station Hotel (from $179) is housed in a turn-of-last-century railroad station. Each of the aqua- and chocolate-hued rooms (formerly railroad offices) vary in size and shape; ask for something on the sixth or seventh floors where twenty-foot windows offer sweeping skyline views.

The recently modernized Top o’ Woodland (from $150) bed-and-breakfast is ideally located in the once bedraggled, now hippified district of East Nashville.

With quirky details like lava lamps, rubber duckies, and bowls of goldfish (the swimming kind, not the snack) upon request, the Hotel Preston (from $109) is a boutique hotel that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Published on Feb 28, 2007 as a web exclusive.