Beale Street

Day 1

We arrived to Beale Street on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 31 with the street practically empty.

Note the "no firearms" sign...

By early evening, the streets were lined with motorbikes as far as the eye could see.  Turns out that Wednesday is "Bike Night".  All the biker gangs turn out and hang out together, drinking beer and smoking weed.

It was loud as you can imagine...

We took ourselves off to Rendezvous for dinner - Vic, Patrick and myself.

And shared pitchers of beer.  Amy, drinking beer, imagine!

Vic & Patrick examined the beer list - not in detail I hasten to add - and randomly chose a beer which turned out REALLY NICE and ended up being Patrick's choice for the remainder of our time in Memphis.

And my choice whenever eating barbecue, lol:

Tiny Bomb American Pilsner | Wiseacre Brewing Co.

Vic's friend Dennis joined us and we continued strolling up and down Beale Street stopping for a drink every now and again. Dennis lives and works in Memphis so it was nice to get the insight from a local.

Day 2

Our second day started with some time apart, I went to Graceland which I loved - read about my trip here.  And Patrick pottered around on his own, enjoying a typical lunch of crawfish!

That afternoon we met up at the Civil Rights Museum which was intense but important.

The evening was about music.  We strolled up and down Beale Street, doing a bit of bar hopping, stopping off wherever we heard good music. 

Silky O'Sullivan's had "ok" music

But it did have goats! Irish ones

Do you see that red brick building top right of photo - peering out from behind the Coors light parasol.  That is our hotel! That is how close we were to Beale Street.

My crappy camera does not do it justice but of course the street lit up with all the neon at night is beautiful.

Vacation Souvenirs

I'm not a big shopper when I am on holidays but I do like to bring one or two little items to spark memories in years to come.

I just thought this was a funny pic to post!  Whenever we come back after a few days away the poor little cat sticks to us like glue.  Here she is, sitting in Patrick's suitcase as he unpacks.

The main thing I wanted to get, after looking on the Graceland website prior to travelling, was a pint glass - on the right.  There actually was not a huge selection and some of them were a bit gaudy but I finally found the perfect one that I was happy with - I think it looks a bit retro too.

Check out the Elvis necklace around the pink coffee cup!

The cup on the left is plastic - I got it when I had lunch in Vernon's Diner paying extra for it.  It was both refillable and reusable so I thought it was great value. And then it was even better value because the guy on the till just charged me for a regular non momento cup when looking at my receipt later.

I also had considered buying a reusable coffee cup in Graceland too but they were not great - either cheap plastic (versus insulated aluminium/metal?? type) or else they were good material but very expensive.  Instead, on my last day I visited the Peabody again and I got myself the coffee cup and a coaster.  I also bought Patrick Rendezvous' seasoning (from the Peabody) and he was DELIGHTED with it.  Patrick can sometimes be hard to buy gifts for (he says he doesn't need/want anything) so I was delighted that he was delighted, lol.

Some better pics of my pint glass.  Thoughts?!