Memphis is a musical town, so we’ll keep the references coming. We’ve read that over 1,000 songs reference Memphis. On any top 100 list of Memphis songs you’ll find Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis. So that’s what we did. For a while anyway. It’s 97 freaking degrees here. And humid. They say it’s raining back home. And cool. Sounds good right now!
We did find a great gluten-free breakfast place called Bedrock Market and Cafe. We might have had the best waffles ever. Or at least for a long time. Cornbread waffles at home are pretty special. Tomorow we need to get going early-ish, so we may try UberEats for the first time and have some waffles delivered to the hotel. Or maybe we’ll just swing by there on the way out of town.
On our walkabout we saw the Gibson Guitar factory, an MLK memorial (there are several), Beale Street, the arena, the ballpark, Starbucks (of course) and the original Main street. Then the heat sent us indoors again.
Beale Street
We had a small lunch at Whole Foods, because that’s exactly the sort of thing people from Seattle do. And then dinner at Babalu. It’s a Taco and Tapas place that started in Jackson, MS and is spreading out from there. Delicious!
We spent last night, and will spend tonight, in the Peabody Hotel. It’s a luxury hotel downtown. It certainly has luxury prices. The room is very nice, but no refrigerator (which we appreciate when we travel by car.) The hotel is famous for their ducks. Yeah, ducks. But not to eat. To watch. They live on the roof. Everyday at 11am they take the elevator down to the lobby and jump in the fountain where they frolic until 5pm. Then they reverse the trip. How do they push the elevator buttons you ask? They don’t. They have a “Duckmaster” who guides them. Really. That’s a job.
People line up for thirty or so minutes to get a good spot to watch the ducks. But you can check it out here. We just saved you a trip to Memphis and about $450. You’re welcome.
This map shows where we’ve been so far.
The car has exactly 800 miles on it; it had 19 when we started. We’ve filled up once and will do so again tomorrow. The tank is pretty big, about 23 gallons, and we’re getting about 22 MPG. Once we hit 2,000 miles we can start to stretch it out. Meaning revs over 4,500. Meaning…
OK, one more Memphis song: Memphis in the Meantime from John Hiatt. See. Him. Live.