Memphis

I visited Graceland on my Deep South road trip. The mansion is fascinating, well worth the visit. Avoid the photographers and shops across the road, though. They are only after (a lot of) your money.

Take the duck tour! The ducks are WWII vechicles that go from land to water, so you ride around looking at Sun Recoreds, the Lorraine Motel, Beale Street and all the other must see landmarks then drive into the water to take a spin around Mud Island. As a native Tennessean who has been to Memphis many times, this was my favorite way of seeing the town!

We stayed for 3 nights and 2 days, which was great but I’m not sure I’d like to stay any longer.

We asked around about barbeque and we decided that Tops (a chain, we visited the one on Union in Midtown) has our favorite pulled pork and The Bar-B-Q Shop (on Madison in Midtown) has our favorite ribs and beef brisket. The pulled pork sandwich meals at Tops are super-affordable at less than $5 and come with amazing baked beans and cole slaw. The Bar-B-Q Shop was simply amazing. I just kept eating and eating and even took some back to our hotel.

The National Civil Rights Museum and the Sun Studio are very worth it – I wrote reviews on their pages. Peabody Place was really disappointing, we went in expecting a huge mall and came to find hardly anything. Really, all there is is what you can see from outside. Beale Street seems to be all drinking and eating and gift-shopping. We were bored in less than an hour.

We considered going to Graceland, but decided against it because tickets run a minimum of $27 for adults.

Overall, the city can go from well-off to poverty from block to block. Nothing too bad, but something to be aware of. Midtown was our favorite place to be. Downtown just seemed to disappoint us and gave off a touristy vibe.

Beale Street! There is also the historic police station right there that was really very interesting.

I went this weekend for student life tour. the whole thing just sucked. I didn’t get to see much of memphis but what I did see I didn’t like. the bellvue(sp?) baptist church is completely ridiculous. 7000 capacity? WHY? I got lost like 4 times I couldn’t imagine doing that every single sunday. geez people. and driving 4 hours each way for a conference that’s 6 hours long is rather pointless. david platt was awesome but I would have gotten more out of a lock-in at my church. oh well