Memphis

After a 4 hour drive we made it to Memphis (and yes I listened to Walking in Memphis as we drove there because it was apt and it's one of my favourite songs ever ok!) When we first got there we went to the Peabody hotel to see the ducks march, yep this is genuinely real ducks that live in the fountains at the hotel that march to and from their rooftop home at 11am and 5pm everyday along a little red carpet!!!! We then drove to the heartbreak hotel and I was gutted to find out that Elvis had never stayed there or actually had anything to do with the hotel apart from the song :( anyway it was kinda tacky as you would expect and there are a lot of crazy Elvis fans that stay there! A pink limousine then took us to a traditional BBQ restaurant where I had BBQ shrimp, mac and cheese and green
beans (it was so nice to see vegetables). After that we wandered to Beale Street, which is one of only 3 locations in the U.S where you can drink on the street, the others are Bourbon Street in New Orleans and obviously the strip in Vegas. Obviously I had a JD and coke because I was in the birth state of JD and it would've been rude not to :P

On our second day in Memphis we were up early to go to Graceland. The house itself was much smaller than I imagined but I guess you have to put it in perspective of the year Elvis bought it which was 1957 when he was just 22. What I also did not know was that he is in fact buried at Graceland along with his parents and grandmother. After visiting here though I've decided that it would be quite cool to own a pink Cadillac and my own private plane, so the job hunting definitely has to start when I get back! 

In the afternoon a few of us went down to the Civil Rights museum which is locate in the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was a really interesting museum that I could have spent hours in but we only had a limited amount of time. There was a lot of information to take in as it covered African American history from the beginnings of slavery way back in the beginning of colonisation of America right through to the election of Barack Obama which is a time span of about 400 years (I've never been so thankful to have background knowledge on a subject)! What was interesting about the museum is that the 1st part of it is located in the motel where MLK was assassinated and the second part was in the building where James Earl Ray was standing when he shot MLK. You couldn't stand directly in the spot where Martin Luther King was standing but you could stand about a foot away from where James Earl Ray was standing which was kind of creepy and I'm not totally sure I enjoyed that part at all. 

For dinner we went to what was advertised as a traditional fried chicken restaurant, all I'm going to say is I'm counting my blessings that I haven't got food poisoning as I write this in the van the next day! We then went to watch the Memphis Redbirds play the Reno Aces at the Autozone park, it was nice to sit out on the hill and just watch some baseball but it was a very slow game and I couldn't quite work out if it was because they're evenly matched or were both just not very good, but whatever I had fun.

Now a 7 hour drive to New Orleans....