Bearhugs Blog

 

 We got up OK this morning, that’s always easy for the first few days, it’s staying awake in the evenings that’s difficult. After a good old American breakfast, bacon, sausage, hash browns, corned beef hash, pancakes, apple sauce, orange juice (we passed on the grits(??) and biscuits with gravy) we were ready for the off. Mind you after all that I’m surprised we could still move, they believe in feeding you well around here.

We took the Blue Line tour out to Gracelands. Not too much queing thankfully. Most of the shops, burger bars, ticket offices etc are on one side of the road and the mansion is on the other. You get shuttle bused into the grounds. Rather nice, it keeps the sheer commercialism away from the mansion. It was actually smaller than we thought and rather pretty. Maria kept saying she could live somewhere like that (dream on). 

The ground floor was a bit showy but not way over the top, it looked like the family home of someone with a bit more money than he knew what to do with, but at the same time pretty comfortable. The kitchen in particular was like anyones kitchen but a bit bigger, a real family kitchen. Upstairs is not open to the public, these were always Elvis’ private rooms.

Of course when we went down into the basement, things got a lot more interesting. Maria nearly fell down the stairs, due to the fact she was disorientated,  both walls and the ceiling of the stairwell were made out of mirrors, very strange. Mind you Elvis seemed very fond of mirrors. The Tv room was interesting, 3 TVs on all the time and a ceiling made of mirrors, Maria liked the pool room, Fully lined with pleated fabric, including the ceiling, but my favourite was the Jungle Room. Partticularly when I saw the Panda in Lisa Marie’s favourite chair.

The outbuilding had a lot of Elvis memorabilia, his gold records, various awards, army uniform etc. I loved his costumes, I think I’d look great in a jumpsuit covered in rhinestones. Wonder what the chances are of Maria making me one?

 

We then crossed back to the other side of the road and had to make a decision. Do we catch the 1.00pm tour bus and get back in time for a river trip, or wait for the 2.30, put the trip off until tommorrow and do some serious souvenir shopping? You can guess what we did. Especially since it meant I could have a quick sit in a Chevy.

Once we got back to the hotel, John took the shopping up to our room, (you should see some of the stuff Maria bought, I just got a tasteful guitar pin), and Maria walked down a block to get some tickets for tonights Redbirds game. She’s determined to have the full American experience.

Just to keep us going we popped into Peabodies, had a quick look at the ducks and a quick snack in the Deli and Dessert (a perfect combination). Lovely cake (and I did have a diet green tea to make up for it).

Looking forward to tonights game.

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Memphis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.