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Published: February 17th 2012
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NBA Action
Grizzlies v Hornets Wednesday 14th Dec - Nashville to Memphis
This turned out to be a bit of a weird day. We woke up not knowing if we´d stay another night in Nashville and as it turned out we didn´t. For what seemed to be a pretty big place there wasn´t that much of a city centre and it certainly wasn´t typical with the absence of all the usual chain shops and restaurants you got everywhere else. Strange but quite refreshing. Instead they´d been replaced by honky tonk bars, boot sellers and other independent vendors. We stuck with our Mexican for the 2nd day running to make them the 1st people to gain some repeat business from us! Then at 4 we left the hotel for a short yomp to the Greyhound station about 10 blocks away. After waiting an hour we got on the bus and were very lucky to get a seat. You can imiagine how annoyed we'd have been to not get a seat having shelved out nearly $100 each on tickets at the start of the day. This was a big sign of Greyhound's ineptness with more to come. Having overheard tales of people getting out of jail the
day before and others who'd fought in "Nam", we arrived at Memphis bus station in the middle of nowhere. They'd kindly moved the bus station from downtown Memphis to a place 30 minutes away in a taxi the month before and had yet to update their website, which in addition to not listing pickup and dropoff places on their tickets was a little disappointing to say the least. We were furious! A $20 taxi ride later and we arrived at our hotel.
Thursday 15th Dec - Memphis
We walked out into a wet, cold and dreary Memphis. The lady at the visitors centre seemed to have taken hold of the mood too with not a lot to say about the city and could only thrust a map into our hands and send us packing. She almost went as far as saying we'd turned up at the wrong time and might as well go home. As it later transpired, Memphis was indeed a very quiet city at that time of year but it certainly was a great place to go and one which I'll have many happy memories of for years to come. We pottered around town for the
rest of the drizzly day familiarising ourselves with the place. The highlight was probably the ducks in the lobby of the Peabody hotel which are a must see. We walked on down through a dodgy part of downtown to get to the Civil Rights Musuem. With it due to shut in 30 minutes we decided to call it a day and head on back tomorrow.
Friday 16th Dec - Memphis
After some much needed rest our 1st job was to buy an all day ticket for the street trolley (tram) and head back down to the Civil Rights Museum. I though we might be there for a while but I hadn't expected it to last 3 and a half hours and that was after rushing through the 2nd half of it! There was so much information to take in it was overwhelming. At the start of the tour we watched an outstanding 30 minute film on the events surrounding Dr Martin Luther King Jr's assassination on 4th April 1968. It was incredibly moving and really made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and in fact my y whole body tingle when it showed excerpts from his "mountain" speech, the day before he was killed. I don't think I've heard or learnt much about this great man since I left school 14 years ago but I certainly hope to make it my business to learn some more now. The museum has been built around the site of his death, The Lorraine Motel, making it all the more poignant and eerie. One of the saddest things I heard, that will likely have easily been forgotten in all the chaos, was that the wife of the proprietor of the hotel died from a heart attack, grief stricken, shortly after learning that Dr King had passed away in her husbands hotel. The museum will now stand forever on this site, I'm sure, as a stark reminder of both America and the world's inhumane treatment of fellow human beings.
After what turned out to be quite the exhausting visit, we retreated to our hotel to get ready for our 1st ever taste of NBA action at the Fedex arena. The line up was a preseason game of the Memphis Grizzlies against the New Orleans Hornets. They certainly know how to put on a great show and it was well worth the 18 bucks. In comparing it to football back home you can't help but feel that we are more passionate and die hard fans of our national game. I couldn't get my head around why or how people are so easily able to walk in and out of the game while there is action on the court and that's even with the many breaks and timeouts that allow you to get away from your seat if you're that desperate to. I think it's a combination of American's just not caring as much about their team, having a shorter attention span and the fact there's a score every 30 seconds as opposed to possibly only 1 in 90 minutes. Beale Street was pretty loud as we left but we decided to save it for Saturday night.
Saturday 17th Dec - Memphis
Elvis day! Having taken the great decision to delay our trip to Gracelands by 1 day due to the inclement weather, we set off in the mini bus from the Rock n Roll museum in blazing sunshine, albeit crispy fresh air. Gracelands is awesome and Elvis is and was most definitely very cool. His home for 20 years, was just that, a home. It's not huge and it's not flashy, it's a really cosy home for all the family. I don't know loads about the guy but I'm pretty sure he was loved by everyone so much not just because he made great music and was a great entertainer but even more so because he was a genuinely likeable person which really comes across as you go round his house. One of the oddest things I learnt that day was that he met President Nixon and more or less asked to sign up as a Federal Drugs agent so he could sort out America's problems. Why is it so many great people never get much past 40? We headed to Beale Street in the evening and enjoyed a great meal at Jonny G's Creole Kitchen restaurant. Followed up in a Blue's bar listening to a live band who were excellent.
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