This Ain't Yo Mama's Library

You know you've moved to the BIG city when your library has a parking garage.

You might be a redneck when your 5 year old ask "Mom, are we at the airport?" when we arrive in the parking garage to the downtown library.
I can see it.
We take a ticket when we drive in.
We have a letter and number to remember.
We ride an elevator up to the main floor.
There are escalators along the way.
It could be the airport now that I think of it.
But we were at the Nashville Public Library downtown.

It is a sight to behold, well once you reach the ground floor anyway. As soon as we walked in I told Jackson that it was bigger than my college library! At 4 full stories of books, media and publications we were impressed. Not to mention the main atrium is made of marble and boast 2 spiral staircases up to the other floors.
We went there for an International food tasting for children and they had tables set up all over the conference room with foods (mostly sweets) from several different countries. There wasn't much to it but Jackson did get to try an Australian delicacy (apparently). He tried Vegimite on toast. (For those that don't know, Vegimite is is a dark brown Australian food paste made from yeast extract. It is a spread for sandwiches, toast, and filling for pastries. Thanks wikipedia!) The best part is, he thought it was chocolate. Yeah, that was a pretty funny twist. Needless to say, he didn't like it!

We took the elevator, along with several of the local homeless folks, and we got off on the children's floor. Yep, a whole FLOOR of the monster library is dedicated to children. We had an impromptu puppet show led by Jackson. Then, we ventured back to the theatre where unbeknownst to us there was a marionette puppet show that was just beginning. It was called Skybear. It was an Indian folk tale about how the milky way was formed. I'll be honest, it was pretty cute and it kept the boys quite entertained for it's entirety.

Afterwards, we picked out some Scoobydoo movies and several CD's for the car. I chose Kids Bopz 17 because if I'm going to listen to kids songs, at least now we can feel down with the times, well, almost.
Okay, not really.
We also chose some Kindergarten themed books since the beginning of school is upon us.

Can you believe I'll have a kindergartener?

I don't think I can discuss it right now.

Before we left, we took a stroll around the courtyard. On the second story, they have a pretty significant courtyard with trees, benches and a fountain. If the "free" parking ticket wasn't about to run out we might have stayed out there longer.

Then like all good library patrons, we had our parking ticket validated and returned to the sketchy garage underneath our fabulous new library.
It won't be our last visit here. The library nearest us is a pitiful little thing that will from now on be used only to return books or pick up holds. We are proud users of the Nashville Public Library-downtown!