If you would have told me that for our 10 year anniversary trip that we would spend 3 days in Memphis, I would have laughed. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with Memphis but it is not where I would have thought we would go for such a big milestone. After all we have previously been to places like New York City, California, Mexico, Hawaii. But it turns out when you have two kids under 2 things are a little different. We wanted to go somewhere without the kids but we did not want to go too far away from them. My parents agreed to watch the girls for us and the only big city within a few hours that we had not really "experienced" was Memphis, so that is where we went. We had been to and through Memphis plenty of times but never really stayed there and did the Memphis things. We dropped the kids off at my parents and stayed in Memphis from Thursday to Saturday. It was weird not having the girls around but it was nice to get away just Margo and I and do whatever we wanted without having to follow their schedule.
We did several fun things and ate at some good places. Trying to find good local places to eat is one of our main things to do when we travel, I always research it a lot. Our first stop once getting to town was to get some barbecue at Central Barbecue which was really good and is consistently rated as the top bbq place in Memphis. The best thing was their ribs and the fact that they served Schlafly beer which is my favorite brand and we can't get it in Arkansas. Next we went to Graceland. It was very interesting to see but pretty ridiculous that it is such a big deal. The coolest thing there was his airplane. And I wish I had all the old furniture. That night we went down to Beale Street and hung out and listened to some music. We stayed at the Hampton Inn that is a block from Beale so we were really close to everything. The next day, Friday was our actual anniversary day. First we went to the National Civil Rights Museum which is housed at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot and killed. This was really really good. It was our favorite thing we did. It was a lot better than I was expecting and really impactful. I would recommend everyone who goes to Memphis to go there. For lunch we had Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken and let me tell you that was some really good chicken. After lunch we went and toured Sun Studio which is where a lot of famous musicians got their start and recorded like Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and more. It was cool to see but the tour was kind of dorky. After that we went and saw a movie at a sweet theater. That night was our official anniversary dinner. We went to a fancy restaurant called Restaurant Iris. This is rated the top restaurant in Memphis and maybe even in Tennessee. The Chef was named best new chef in 2009 by Food and Wine magazine and is considered one of the best chefs in the south. The main dish that I had was featured on the Food Network show "Best Thing I Ever Ate" a couple years ago. The restaurant and meal was really really good and I was super full when we left. Everything was good...appetizer, main dish, dessert, and drinks. With how big of a deal this place is I was hoping that it would be the best meal I had ever had but it was not. However it was definitely in the top 3 I think.
The next day we went to Mud Island which is on the Mississippi. There is a park there that has the Mississippi river museum and a scale replica of the Mississippi River, that is what I wanted to see there. Every 30 inches of the replica equaled a mile of the real Mississippi. It had running water coming from all the tributaries and showed were all the states, bridges, and major towns were along the river. It opened up into and acre pond that represented the Gulf of Mexico. It was really cool and I am glad we checked it out. It is those types of things that I really like to check out when we travel and hope to check out with the kids when they get older. After that we had lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant before heading home since we can not get Dim Sum in NWA. It is always a good sign when you go in an ethnic food restaurant and you are the only caucasians in there. The food was good and we got to try a couple things we had never had before...chicken feet and beef tripe (cow stomach).
So that was our trip in a nutshell. It was fun and good to get away for a few days but it was good to come home and be back with the girls.
Here we are at Graceland
National Civil Rights Museum
Sun Studio
Mississippi River replica
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