Day 4

It’s a long but leafy drive from Memphis to Nashville, a bit like a 200-mile long tree lined avenue, but with bigger trucks! The road is misleadingly uniform, so it’s a surprise how different the two cities are. Nashville feels hotter (despite being higher and further north) and has a much more prosperous appearance.

Lunch is an alleged “prime rib sandwich”, basically a complete prime rib with two wonderful pieces of fried bread. Then we visit another fabric shop, which has by far the largest selection of fabric prints either of us have ever seen in one place.

Fabric shopping complete, it’s a short drive to the “music district”. Nashville must have more live music venues than London, and they are all within about half a mile. There’s literally music coming out of every orifice. We take afternoon drinks on the rooftop of the Hard Rock Cafe with a bunch of madmen who are prepared to attempt anything from Johnny Cash to Whitesnake, although they have to read the lyrics of Brown Eyed Girl off a phone. Dinner is with three charming young ladies playing their own country songs.

In the middle of dinner one of the songs is about whiskey, and I realise to my horror that I’ve been heading to the wrong Lynchburg for the Jack Daniels tour. Fortunately the mistake is recoverable just at this point, so tomorrow will be a slightly different route to the one we originally planned!

Day 3

The drawback of being a stone’s throw from the airport is somewhat curtailed sleep as the flights start at about 4.30. Oh well…

First stop is a fabric shop on the outskirts where Frances buys some tassles, and we find by accident a flag shop where we manage to replace several of our older flags. Then we drive back to the centre via Summer Avenue which suddenly within one block transitions from tired commercial properties to very expensive-looking leafy suburbs.

In the centre we get coffee at the old and very elegant Peabody Hotel, whose central lounge fountain has been home to a bunch of ducks since an incident involving drunk hunters in the 1930s. The amount of duck merchandise is staggering, and their “walk of fame” outside has the stars’ names picked out with webbed footprints.

We decide to walk up to Sun Studios, and spend half an hour in the tiny recording room where so many great careers got started. The seven block walk in each direction probably just about cancels out the chocolate duck served with coffee. Then it’s back to the waterfront restaurant for a catfish sandwich for lunch – Memphis is seriously bad for the waistline!

The Cotton Museum is mis-named. It should be The Cotton and Blues Museum. It’s the only place in Memphis where we see an acknowledgement that it took musicians from Kent and Surrey to break down the barriers and make blues a universally-accessible artform.

A walk along a very quiet historic Main Street brings us to the Civil Rights Museum, which is closed. However we don’t have to go in to appreciate its location – the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King met his untimely end. So much for the promise about no more graves!

In general Memphis seems to be trying to quietly forget the days of discrimination, which seems a bit disingenuous, but maybe that’s what is required for a society to heal.

Dinner is taken at B B King’s Café, with a very good blues band who manage to make even Bill Withers songs sound like Cream. Throughout the meal Frances is occasionally squeaking as old cars turn into the pedestrian Beale Street, and we come out to a custom car show which fills the street for three blocks. Another “target rich environment”.

Day 2

Another early start, but thanks to jet lag it’s not a major issue. Reagan National Airport turns out to be an architectural gem, and I get some great shots of the main hall. Operationally it’s not at quite the same level and US Airways first have a very confusing check-in process, then load us onto a bus which spends about half an hour circling the tarmac before delivering us to a very small plane. At least we’re well looked after by the lone stewardess, and promptly delivered to Memphis to start our tour in earnest.

Picking up the car proves slightly harder work than usual, but we are rewarded with a very dramatic Mustang convertible in powder blue. Annoyingly Ford have changed the shape of the boot yet again, so it is now physically impossible to fit two suitcases, and we will be doing the whole trip with one on the back seat. At least the hotel is only about 5 minutes drive and easily located.

After lunch the first target is Graceland. This proves to be rather smaller than expected and much less tacky than feared. Given Elvis’ slightly odd choices of decor and gadgets “elegant” may not be quite the right word, but neither is it completely wrong. You are left with the impression of a good man who liked his cars and gadgets but was otherwise of relatively simple tastes, and maybe just found the stress of constant performing a bit too much to cope with.

The Meditation Garden existed as such even before Elvis’ death, another indication of his sensibilities. Today it houses his grave and those of his parents and grandmother. I promise Frances “no more graves”, but some promises are harder to keep.

We haven’t really tuned into the rest of Memphis, but the lady at the Graceland tourist desk gives us directions to somewhere called Beale Street. The route involves driving along the recently renovated waterfront of the Mississippi River, and it’s great to see Ole Man River in reality after a lifetime of reading about it. We then walk into a wall of sound, with music of every sort coming out of every door. Beale Street turns out to be very much the tourist hub of Memphis, with lots of interesting shops, great signage, and all that music. In photography terms it’s what they call a “target rich environment”.

We had a trip to the USA in late September and early October, which was highly enjoyable and produced a few interesting photos. Here’s what happened…

Day 1

Up early for flight to Washington. Everything goes smoothly apart from a delay getting away from Heathrow, however the pilots manage to make about half up on the flight. We arrive early enough to get on the DC Metro for a quick trip to Arlington Cemetery. The Metro proves to be straightforward, but a bit slow and infrequent on a Sunday.

At the Cemetery we focus on the graves of the Kennedy family, with a poignant reminder of their achievements. We also manage a quick walk to the top of the hill from where you can see the Lincoln and Washington Monuments, the Capitol and the Pentagon in one relatively narrow view, which emphasises the relatively small scale of the city.

Back in Alexandria we find a pleasant and tasty Mexican meal, which we manage to eat outside with no meteorological issues, but having to dodge falling beech nuts. Back to the hotel and early to bed (US time, it’s about 2 am UK time).