About a month ago, I took my very first trip to Memphis. I have wanted to go to Memphis ever since I heard about the Peabody Ducks! My husband and I took a long weekend there with good friends of our who have been to Memphis before, and they were the perfect tour guides! Some highlights:
Gotta start with the Peabody Ducks at the Peabody Hotel. The ducks live at the hotel in a penthouse and every day at 9 AM, a doorman brings them down in an elevator and they walk the red carpet to the fountain in the lobby and happily swim there until 5 PM when they are paraded out of the fountain and back up to their penthouse. It is the most adorable thing you will ever see!
Beale Street is so much fun! So many cool bars and music fills the air everywhere! They close it off so you can walk right down the middle of the street. We visited the Rum Boogie Cafe twice for some great music — easily my favorite bar we visited on Beale Street!
No trip to Memphis would be complete without visiting Graceland! It is fascinating — frozen in time. It made me wonder what Lisa Marie must think to have her childhood home frozen in time like that and a tourist attraction.
The Civil Rights Museum is a place I will definitely go back to visit because the couple hours I had there simply wasn’t enough time. The museum is built right into the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It actually takes your breath away to stand in that parking lot and look up at the balcony, adorned with a wreath of flowers. That site is iconic and to be right there in person is humbling. The museum is a fascinating, embarrassing, and yet powerful reminder of too many shameful parts of our country’s history and the triumphs that resulted from actions taken by so many incredibly brave people.
I had a life-altering meal at Gus’s Fried Chicken. Just remembering that meal makes my mouth water as I’m typing this! I ate every bit of my fried chicken that night, simply gorged myself, and it was worth every morsel. If you love fried chicken, this place will simply blow you away.
We also had dinner one night at Rendezvous Barbecue. Pretty good stuff there, too. If I’m being honest, their smoked sausage was some of the best I have ever had! You can’t go to Memphis without having barbecue, now can you?
I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend trip to Memphis! I am looking forward to a return trip — more Beale Street! More great music! More Civil Rights Museum! More Gus’s Fried Chicken! I can hardly wait!
The View from the Cheap Seats 
My only experience in Memphis is Graceland. I was on a road trip with a group and several of my traveling companions wished to go there as we passed through. It turned it out to be far more interesting than I expected. I’d love to get back and actually explore the city and visit the Civil Rights Museum.
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It was really interesting. It’s reminiscent of the Holocaust Museum in DC, if you’ve been there, in the way it is laid out. There is so much to learn there, I just didn’t get to immerse myself the way I wanted to. That means I’ll have to make a return trip!
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