Hot Springs to Memphis

Not one to complain about a good massage and steam treatment, I must say the car ride (me as passenger this time!) was exhausting and not long into it we stopped in Little Rock to see the Clinton Presidential Library. Neither of us knowing much about presidential libraries, we scoffed at the admission (but forked it over anyway), grumbling about being students and having to pay to get into a library. As some of you may know, these institutions are more like museums in honour of past presidents, and it was nice to fall upon one from our lifetime and who we both relatively admired. Despite the blatant back-patting, it was a good exhibition, and we continued on to our destination: Memphis, TN.

Looking back on Memphis, we are ashamed at one wrong decision, made upon our arrival when we resolved that we would spend the last hours of daylight at Graceland (yes, Elvis' mansion)
and thus have the whole next morning to browse the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine motel, where MLK was assassinated. Although the humble abode of the King were amusing, we would discover the next day that the Civil Rights Museum is closed on Tuesdays; we would never enter its doors and learn more about this piece of history, the little bit that would not have been art-related. It is a sad, sad fact: we chose Elvis over politics and revolution. Woe is the day.

That aside, the night we spent in Memphis was a little anticlimactic. The city seemed slow and dark when we went out for dinner and music - finally, we found Beale Street, but not its BBQ or blues! The street was alive with neon, open cafés blasting mediocre live covers of the great musicians who have past through the gates here, but the tamales Philippe ordered in a diner we'd been ushered into off the street were bland, and our moods fell into the same lack of motivation - there are always nights. Even the horse-drawn carriage chauffeurs didn't have optimistic advice for us, so we called it a night.

After the Martin Luther King disappointment, we headed off towards St. Louis, where our friend Jason eagerly awaited our arrival, where we’d looked forwards to a place to rest since the beginning! Phi will recount the rest.