Thursday, December 27, 2007

MEMPHIS

The Memphis Temple is the same temple as the Baton Rouge and similarly hidden away in an obscure part of a suburban neighborhood. It almost becomes just another church building. The cool part is actually the Stake Center with the drive through services.



Beale Street
in downtown Memphis is kind of a kiddie version of Bourbon Street – both literally and figuratively; I mean, there are actually kids on Beale Street. It’s similar in that it’s a number of blocks that appear to be permanently blocked off and which are lined with neon signs advertising various nightlife. It’s only a few blocks though and while it has a few bars most of the places are restaurants or Blues clubs. You could hear them singing from outside, so I listen for a bit. It was a cold, rainy evening so there wasn’t a lot of activity.



There’s a Hard Rock CafĂ© at one end of the district. There’s also a Rock and Soul museum around the corner, but they didn’t allow photographs. Not much worth taking a picture of anyways - there wasn’t much “rock” to it. It was really just a history of soul and blues in and around Memphis up through the 70’s or so.

And then there’s Graceland. The main attraction is just the mansion, but they’ve made a whole pseudo-park out of it all. There’s more ground space dedicated to gift shops than the actual Presley estate. You pay for a ticket to get onto the shuttle that drives you across the street and up to the mansion.



It’s a fun place, with all sorts of rooms that are designed in a different style and with a different purpose. It’s pretty much all as it was back in the day, but a few of the rooms had been converted into memorabilia rooms.



A shrine to the king. He lies here with his parents and grandma.

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