We didn't get to enjoy the full experience of Nashville because we arrived at 6:30am after driving through the night (running off coffee and energy drinks) and left in the early afternoon. But we went to a hotel in the morning and asked what they recommended and found a couple parks, one in which the Greek Parthenon was restructured in the center of the park, and the Loveless cafe.
This was a tourist info center, which would have been convenient if it was open so we could have taken a tour, but we settled for the picture in front of the sign instead.
The strip of building along the water were pretty sweet, including this one (the Coyote Ugly!) I'll bet this part of Nashville would have been a lot more lively if it were not so early in the morning.
We probably should have been a little more careful leaving our luggage in sight, but maybe people just thought it was a dead body because nothing was stolen!
We went to the museum inside the Parthenon too. It was neat to see the reenactment of how the Greek's built the Parthenon, but we were a bit rushed to go through because we needed to get to our next destinations (Graceland, and the National Civil Right Museum) before they closed. We only spent about an hour inside, the final stop in side was a massive statue of the Greek God Athena. The admission was only $6 per person.
When we asked for advice of places to see when in Nashville, this cafe was highly recommended by the lady at the hotel. She said she brings all her guests here when they visit. So we checked it out and learned quickly that this was definitely the place everyone goes on Saturday mornings (it was about noon when we got there). There was an hour and a half wait time to get in so we ended up stopping at one of the shops that was in the courtyard and got some jams, and biscuit mix and pulled pork to go.
MEMPHIS
Arriving in Memphis, we went to the tourist information center first to see where we could find Graceland and the National Civil Rights Museum. The most exciting part: once we reached Memphis it was warm enough for sandals!!! yay!! I love warm weather.
I was quite excited to be able to see Graceland, the home of Elvis, but it turned out to be not so exciting and more of a money grab than anything. To park alone, we paid $10 then we headed in to find that to actually tour Elvis's home it would cost an additional $35 per person (and that was the very basic package). We ended up looking at Elvis's home from a distance, touring through the shops, reading a bit of Elvis's history then leaving.
Next, we headed to the National Civil Rights Museum, the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot. This was absolutely one of the highlights of this trip, a really eye-opening experience to the beginning stages of the Civil Rights movement (we only had enough time to tour the actual hotel, which focused on the history, but if we had more time we could have also toured the building across the street: the building where the gunshot was fired from, which focuses more on the recent movements). There were parts where I felt ashamed and embarrassed of my white heritage, like articles from newspapers where people were being burned to death or hung based on discrimination, and signs that did not allow for people of color to use restrooms, or enter stores. I really value the progress that has been made from these days, although there is so much more progress to be made. A part that I really liked about this museum tour was a bus that was set up that took us through the story of Rosa Parks and her stand against moving to the back of the bus based on her skin colour. We had a really good tour guide that took us through some of the history and we saw the room in which Martin Luther King stayed in the night before he was killed.
This was the actual room that Martin Luther King stayed in the night before he was shot. When in the museum you cannot actually go inside the room, but you can view it from the glass window from the hotel room next door. In front of this room, on the balcony is where he was when the bullet hit him.
They closed the hotel completely in the 1980s to make it a museum, and there was one lady who was living in a room, who refused to leave and they had to force to remove her. She was a housekeeper at the hotel when it was in operation. She still stands on the opposite side of the street of the hotel protesting the museum. We went over to her after going through the museum to see what she was protesting and found that she believes that in such a low income area that these rooms should be made into housing for people in the community, and it should not be a tourist attraction.
After we left the museum, we went to find a hotel. We learned that Memphis actually extends past the bridge to Arkansas, and we stayed in West Memphis Arkansas for the night at the Economy Lodge for a very reasonable price.
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