A day in Memphis

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Saturday Night - April 18th

Woke up this morning to Elvis music which constantly plays throughout the hotel and had some hotel breakfast (English muffin and what they like to call juice). We showered up and headed into the city. We didn’t really have any plans for many things so we were pretty much winging it.

Parked the car by the Mississippi River, really weird but it was free and in a well lit area, good enough for us.

We walked up Beale Street which was awesome. They had a Corvette car show which closed down the whole street. We were unsure how you would maneuver around the street by car even if it was open. The whole street was filled with bars, food, and music. These are all things that we like.

We walked up to Sun Studios where Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name a few, all recorded albums. It was really cool to check out. We noticed that most things not on Beale street were closed, we are assuming it was because of the weekend. How do people get things done in this town when they aren’t at work?

After that we got some lunch at Dyers which was a soda-jerky type place, burgers and shakes. The food was amazing, the interesting part was they had a full bar which we then decided they must hand out liquor licenses like Halloween candy around here. While we are on that topic we also noticed that there must not been any open container law in Memphis because people were walking down the street drinking.

After lunch we went to the Gibson guitar factory and took the tour. It was pretty interesting but the plant was closed so we didn’t see anyone making guitars. The best part was the tour guide was exactly what you would expect, think about it.

We had about two hours to kill so we decided it was coffee time and find a place to sit down, so we did. After that we went to the Peabody to have a beer and wait for the ducks to walk down the red carpet. Pretty cool to see and worth checking out.

For dinner we went to Rendezvous which the place everyone says you need to check out. It was awesome. Memphis style barbeque and they serve the ribs dry which was interesting but really good. The weirdest part about this place is we think the owner must hire people on the streets to bring you there because over the course of the day at least three people came up to us and tried to bring us there. If we were in Boston we would have looked for a Police officer but since we weren’t there we just walked away weirded out.

After dinner we went for a nightcap (at 7 PM) at the Flying Saucer (a draft beer emporium, also recommended). We had some different beers from around the country (we though that was fitting). Nice place. They didn’t sell any ‘Beer Goddess’ shirts to the public, so Mallory will have to receive something else ridiculous.

After a cab ride back to the car (yes it was still there) and a short drive we ended up back at the hotel for the night. On the ride back to the hotel we listened to the sox and they were winning, we decided that XM radio is one of the best inventions ever. Driving cross country with a standard FM radio would be miserable.

Tomorrow we hit Graceland and the road to Oklahoma and Texas.

Maybe we'll see Paul Simon?

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