Memphis

Today we left Chicago at around 8pm.  We drove until about 12 am and stopped at a town called Effingham.  We stayed at a Country Inn and Suites which was pretty nice.  The hotel had a indoor pool and hot tub and continental breakfast.  It was also a good place to stop because there was a Starbucks across the street.  We went to the Wal-Mart, which was a fun experience because I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in over five years. 

We arrived at our hotel around 2pm on Friday.  Our hotel was actually pretty far from downtown, about 20 miles.  Also, there is some major construction on 40, which was a problem a few times on the trip.  The hotel was nice and again had an indoor pool and hot tub.  It was near a mall and there was a lot of shopping, resturants, etc in the area.  Friday night we headed over to the Beale Street Music Festival.   We saw Egypt Central, Puddle of Mudd, Buckcherry, Train, Jason Mraz and a little of BB King.  All of the bands were good.  My favorites were Train and Buckcherry. Train did a really great cover of a Led Zeppelin and Buckcherry was just crazy.   The food at the festival isn't the greatest and there is a pretty limited selection of alcohol, only Budweiser and frozen Hurricanes.   The only bathrooms are port-a-pottys which were kind of muddy and gross.  There really isn't a lot of places to sit down because most of the grounds are muddy and you can't bring chairs, only blankets.  My overall impression of the festival is that there are some great bands that perform, but some of logistical elements of the festival could be better to make it more enjoyable and comfortable for everyone.  After spending several hours at the festival for three days, some better amenities would be much appreciated.  I would go again and just try to prepare better.

On Saturday, Sunday and Monday we ate breakfast at a nearby Waffle House.  It was probably one of the nicer Waffle Houses that I have been to.  The staff was nice and the service was quick.  We went to the Pink Palace Museum in the early afternoon.  It is kind of a weird place.  It was fun, but given the limited amount of time, I probably would have gone somewhere else instead.  It was interesting to see some of the historical information on Memphis, but it is kind of a hodge podge of stuff at the museum.  There is an Imax, a planetarium, the Piggly Wiggly guy's mansion and museum, a historical area and some other stuff.  I think because I live in Chicago and have access to world class musuems I could have skipped over this part of the trip.  It was interesting but again a lot of the stuff I could have seen in Chicago museums.  We ate dinner at a resturant near our hotel called Abuelo's.  It was really good.  The food was great, the service was fast and it was inexpensive.  Some of the best Mexican food I have had.  On Saturday at the Beale Street Music festival we saw a little bit of Three Days Grace, Cake and Huey Lewis and the News.  Huey Lewis was probably the best.  I was not impressed by Cake.  They had some sound troubles and ended up walking off the stage mid-song and then came back out about 5 minutes later.  They just didn't sound that great.  Finally, we went to Beale Street.  It is a crazy place.  We didn't really go in anywhere, we just walked along and ordered drinks from some of the bars in the street.  Something to see.

Although I was getting pretty exhausted, Sunday was probably the best day in Memphis.  We went to Sun Studio and the Rock and Soul Museum.  Sun Studio is just awesome and the Rock and Soul Museum is really great as well.  It was really inspiring.  I could have spent a lot more time at both places.  We ate dinner at this place called Jillian's.  I didn't have high expectations because is seemed really like a tourist spot, but the food was actually really good.  We also saw Staind, Chicago and Yellowcard at the Beale Street Music Festival.  Yellowcard was really great, I was blown away.  I love Staind, so they were good as well.

Monday we went to Graceland, by this time, we were totally exhausted.  We stayed out pretty late on Sunday.  It was pretty cool to actually go inside Elvis's house.  I am not a huge Elvis fan, but I would like to learn more about him after visiting his house.   I left Graceland feeling kind of bad for Elvis.  He seemed like a really nice person....very driven, but kind of crazy.  He definitely left us too soon.  It just so happened that American Idol filmed at Graceland on Saturday, so it was cool to watch the show on Tuesday and know that we had just been there too.  Plus the AIs sang Elvis songs.  We ate at Corky's which is really famous and popular.  The food just didn't sit that well with me.  I felt sick for the rest of the day into the next day.

We left really early on Tuesday morning to drive home.  It is about an 8-9 hour drive to Chicago.  There were a lot of things that we didn't get to see that I would have liked to have seen such as Mudd Island, the Civil Rights Museum, the Botanical Gardens, etc.  I think we will take another trip to Memphis again soon.  The weather was in the lower 70's most of the time which was nice.  In general, the people were nice.  The downtown area could be a little more vibrant, it isn't as built up as someplace like Chicago, but it seems like it has a lot of potential.  It seems like the type of city were a lot of people live in the burbs.  In summary, a great trip with a lot of music.