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Published: January 9th 2011
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Good nights sleep had by all. Had breakfast in the lobby area with a nice warm fireplace. It’s minus 2 outside and Luke discovered a basketball court and has been shooting some hoops. He was amazed at how frozen the grass was around the court (crispy to walk on !)
Fruit for breakfast today to get my body over the Hunka Hunka burger I had at Gracelands. That was such a good experience going there.
Nice and sunny today with little wind but very cold. I have just realised how bad the torndao’s were on New Years Eve when we were in Jackson and we only just missed.
Time for some washing today and then we head into downtown Memphis.
We were just about to leave our room to go to our Memphis Mojo tour and the phone rang to say they had cancelled as we were the only one’s who had booked. Pretty ordinary as we had booked this months ago, and now had to wing it on our own. If we had left 5 minutes earlier we would have been waiting at the agreed bus stop in the freezing cold.
Anyway we headed in
to Memphis downtown and went to check out Beale Street where Rock ‘n’ Roll was created but it was actually closed to traffic so thought we’d go there later for dinner. We then went down to the edge of the mighty Mississippi River and saw Mud Island and the famous bridge that carries the Monorail and was the setting of the Tom Cruise movie “The Firm”.
One thing about the drivers in Memphis they are revheads. I was driving on the ring road doing nicely on he speed limit of 55 mph and they are flying by me like I am standing still ! Not just the occasional care but every car ! I’ve never seen anything like it.
We then decided to head across the river to visit another state being Arkansas. Quite different on the other side with more of a rural outlook. Went to a Gas Station for Petrol & Subway and amazed to see a Rand McNally USA Map Book for only $6.99 (I’m sure they they sell for $50-00 bucks back home). Some great hats and beanies on sale too but did not buy any. I did buy a 24 pack of 500ml
water bottles for $4.00 (the hotel is charging $2.00 per bottle). No need to keep in fridge as the car is doing fine with the temperature maxing out at 5 degrees.
A sunny day anyway so we headed to Memphis Zoo which was on special a $7.50 entry. We soon realised why as a lot of exhibits were closed (too cold for monkies to be outside I guess). Walked for a while and soon found some good exhibits being Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Bald Eagle, Penguins, and Panda Bears.
We then headed back into Downtown to see the famous Peabody Ducks at the Peabody Hotel. At 11AM in the morning around 10 ducks come down the Hotel elevator and walk along the red carpet and climb into the fountain in the lobby and swim around all day. At 5PM they climb out and go back along the red carpet to the elevator and say goodnight. A big crowd of people here to watch this event (only in America).
We then walked down to Beale Sreet which was not as big an area I had thought but steeped in history (only about 2 blocks of action). We went
into BB Kings for dinner and a Blues Band was playing. Music was great being live and kids were engrossed as they had never heard anything like this before but soon were enjoying it. Bought a CD from the band after they finished and the guy got the lead singer to autograph it for us. Turned out he was blind and had an amazing voice (aka Ray Charles or BB King who had been hear before).
Temp going down to minus 5 tonight so back to room pretty early and bunker down. Tomorrow we are off the Nashville Tennessee to get another musical experience but this time it’s Country.
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