Memphis

Our plan for the start of the day was to visit the Civil Rights Museum, which is located at the hotel where Rev Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated, but the museum is closed on Tuesday. So we headed into downtown Memphis to visit other atttractions.

Downtown Memphis is not very big and it seemed to be really quiet. There was very little traffic on the roads and not many people in the street.

Our first stop was going to be Sun Studios but literally bus loads of tourists were lining up ahead of us, so we decided to give that a miss. We then walked to the Peabody Hotel to watch the famous Peabody Ducks. Since the 1930s, 5 mallards have lived on the roof of this beautiful hotel in the middle of downtown and every day at 11am the "duckmaster" escorts them from their home on the roof to a fountain inside the hotel, and then escorts them back upstairs at 5pm. There is a crowd of onlookers for this event every day!

From there it was a short walk to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame and Museum. This small museum had memorabilia from lots of artists including Elvis, BB King, and Isaac Hayes. About a block from there was the Memphis Rock and Soul Museum. This was a larger museum which provided an audio tour of exhibits that gave more of a historical context to the history of music in the American south, and in particlar Memphis. Nadia spent most of her time taking pictures of exhibits from Johnny Cash memorabilia at both of these museums!

While wondering around downtown Memphis we walked along Beale Street, which is the main music strip of the city. The street has a long history but, despite it being very popular with tourists, it still has a really good vibe. It was also not overly corwded when we were there.

After lunch we headed outside of downtown to visit te Slave Haven museum. This museum is located at a house that was used as a stop on the underground railroad which was used by slaves trying to escape into northern US states and Canada. The guided tour and explanation of the history of the slave trade and the efforts to help escaping slaves was confronting but really interesting.

From there it was back to the hotel for a quick rest and thinking about our plans for the evening. We knew we wanted to see some live music, so after doing a bit of online research we made a booking at BB King's Blues Club on Beale Street. We had dinner and watched 2 live bands, Dr Fangaz and the Remedy, and then The King Beez. Both bands were really good and we really enjoyed the food, music and atmosphere. Beale Street was closed at both ends for a classic car exhibit, so after we left the bar we wondered along the street and were able to listen to many other live bands that were playing at the venues all along the street.

So the answer was no to Graceland. There was plenty of other opportunities to see evidence of Elvis' influence on the music of Memphis, but there is also a lot more to Memphis that Elvis, so we didn't really think we needed to head there.