Nashville for solo travellers: safety and tips

Nashville rewards a solo traveller who plans the evening around music rather than around a group. The city's core is small enough to cover on foot in a day, and the things people come for — honky-tonks, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman — sit within a few blocks of each other.

Book one ticketed show rather than drifting between bars. A seat at the Ryman Auditorium or the Grand Ole Opry gives you a fixed plan for the night, which is the main thing solo travellers lose when they travel alone. For the rest of the trip, free live sets on Lower Broadway fill the gap.

The useful solo map of Nashville is small. Downtown holds Broadway, the Ryman, Bridgestone Arena and the riverfront. The Gulch is a 15–20 minute walk southwest. Midtown and Music Row sit about 30 minutes south of Downtown on foot, or a short rideshare. East Nashville is across the river, 10–15 minutes by car, and is where a lot of the cheaper rooms and neighbourhood bars are.

You do not need a car if you stay in the core. You do need one, or rideshares, for East Nashville, the Opry Mills area and day trips out of the city. WeGo runs local buses and a few express routes, but frequencies are low by big-city standards, so treat the bus as a budget option rather than a fast one.

Nashville is generally a safe city for a solo visitor who stays in the busy parts, but Lower Broadway at closing time is the one place to plan around. Bars empty onto the same few blocks at once, crowds are heavy and drinks are strong. Leaving before about 1am, or taking a rideshare from a well-lit pickup point rather than walking back alone, removes most of the risk.

Solo women report the usual bar-scene attention rather than anything specific to Nashville. Standard precautions apply: watch your drink, tell someone where you are going, and use a licensed rideshare rather than an unmarked car. If someone offers you a free ride or a 'deal' on a bar crawl, walk on — see the scams page for the patterns that show up here.

Money-wise, Nashville is mid-priced for the US. Hotels are the big cost and the reason to book early; food and music can be cheap if you eat counter-service and stick to free honky-tonk sets. Sales tax is added at the till, and tipping is expected as everywhere in the US.