Beale St & Bourbon St, Ribs and Gumbo, Blues & Jazz, Memphis and New Orleans

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Thought we should update our blog again, it’s been a few days and we have ventured to the Deep South. Gretchen flies out tomorrow back to Australia after 10 months away, 2 continents, numerous cultures, trekking, overnight buses, planes, snow, road trips, diving, and creating a home overseas!
Memphis was first, home of the blues and Elvis. Entering Tennessee and massive stretches of water where paddocks should have been, the highway sandbagged. We crossed the flooded Mississippi into town. Wandering down to the Lorraine Motel, we saw the spot where Martin Luther King Jnr was gunned down, now the National Civil Rights Museum.
Beale St is the centre of the party. The biggest groups of people were the huge numbers of police standing on the corners, as well as the enclosed cherry pickers they could watch all the action from. We ate big ribs and ‘big ass beers’, 1 litre plastic cups of Budweiser. We listened to live blues as we ate, and the night soon became karaoke. And we’re not talking just any old drunk yelling match, I’m sure a few of the contenders were of made the Australian Idol final. A very interesting night indeed including a raid of the hotel vending machine well past midnight.
An early rise to breakfast and Graceland. After paying an exorbitant amount to see inside the King’s home, all 3 of us were pleasantly surprised by how interesting and extensive Graceland was. We paid our respects to the King at his tomb, the most visited tomb in the world.
Back on the road through the green Mississippi delta, taking turns to sleep and drive, catching up on the previous night.
New Orleans. Bourbon Street is quite a site, the smell of vomit is quite overpowering. Wandering around the French Quarter is very beautiful, taking in the sights and sounds. The food is where things get interesting, after discovering that ‘crawfish’ are really just yabbies, and the oysters are fresh water, we jumped into menus devouring jambalaya, gumbo, crawfish, oysters, fried chicken, craw cakes and poh boys!! The creole and Cajun flavours can be intense but worth it.
Strolling through the St Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans oldest remaining cemetery, we bumped into Walter, who became our friendly tour guide and New Orleans expert. He detailed the West African voodoo traditions, what it meant to the people and the ability for Catholicism and Voodoo to coexist. We stood at the base of the tomb where Peter Fonda did his psyhcadellic thing in the film Easy Rider, the only film given permission to shoot in this cemetery. We also paid respects at Marie Laveau’s tomb, according to Google even more visited than Elvis! Either way definitely in the top 3 with Jim Morrison and Elvis. She was a very important lady, voodoo high priestess to all of New Orleans and the French Quarter.
Finally in New Orleans we found some sunny weather and left the rain behind that had followed us since Banff. Of course with our winter tan, probably the whitest we had been in our lives, our skin soaked up the sun and turned a nice shade of red!

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