Don't you just love a boat cruise! Well a good steam boat on the Mississippi never goes astray! The river was up pretty hugh due to the floods and there were times where on the sky deck, you would see half a tree floating by and most of the tree tops were just about under water. It was a balmy sunny night and perfect for a cruise.
We had a traditional Memphis BBQ for dinner, the pulled pork, chicken, coleslaw, corn and baked beans with bread. They are not the most elegant eaters and the food lacked a little pizazz but the chocolate mousse for dessert certainly hit the spot! Then they had a blues band who were so relaxed that they didn't have a set list, just played whatever and whenever and some of the muso's did not even know the songs but just worked it out as they went along and they still sounded fab. I felt like I needed a cigar or something listening to them. Of course it wasn't long until Tim made his way up to the stage and had a sing with them! And of course we had a boogie.
The Peabody -
The Peabody hotel is the ritzest hotel in all of Memphis! It has this tradition morning and evening called the 'Marching of the Ducks'. This is basically as it sounds...a duck march. This tradition started when a group of guys went out one night after work and got quite drunk, as a practical joke on their boss, they thought wouldn't it be funny if we put a bunch of ducks in the fountain. So they did and then headed up to bed forgetting all baout them until the morning. In the monring when they fianlly dragged themselves out fo bed, they discovered the ducks were still in the fountain swimming hapily around and a crowd had gathered to watch. And so every day since then there have been ducks left in the fountain.
But what is so special about this is, the hotel upstairs on the roof have built a duck palace where they keep a bunch of ducks and at 11am every monring the hotel duck master walks the ducks from the roof, to the elevator, they ride the elevator down to the lobby and then walk along the red carpet from the eleveator to the fountain, which would be about 5 meters, and start happily swimming. Then at 5pm every eveing they reverse this routine.
It gathers huge crowds and has been able to market this very expensive hotel around these ducks.
The Fire Museum -
On the last day we thought we had just about exhausted the place but there was one place that Tim had to go and see. Unfortunately we left it until Sunday and we didn't realize that Memphis pretty much shuts down on Sunday's as everyone is in church. The town become a ghost town!
So we didn't get to do the museum as it was closed, but I was instructed to take photos. I guess this is for you Petey!
I could have stayed in Memphis a lot longer. I really enjoyed. Who knows, one day I might be "walking in Memphis" again some day.
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