After breakfast this morning, we walked across the hotel parking lot to the Graceland ticket plaza where we first took a quick tour of Elvis Presley's private plane, the Lisa Marie, before boarding a shuttle bus that took us across the street and up the driveway to the front doors of Elvis's infamous home.
We followed along on our audio tour headsets as we moved from room to room on the main level and down to the basement (the upstairs is closed to visitors). Highlights include the sparkling living room, the dark wood-paneled kitchen, the state-of-the-art media room in the basement -- with its three TVs set into the wall -- and the "Jungle Room" addition on the back of the house, with its wall-to-wall green shag carpeting on the floor and on the ceiling. The whole home was frozen in 1973.
The tour also led us out back through an outbuilding that housed Elvis's manager's office; through a building that is now known as the Trophy Room, with exhibits on the highlights of Elvis's career in music and film; through his private racquetball gym, which how houses costumes and memorabilia from his mid-1970s mega-shows -- you know, the blingy white jumpsuits; and through the Meditation Garden, where Elvis, his parents and his grandmother are buried.
We learned quite a bit about Elvis through the whole tour, which was actually quite tasteful and reverential -- not at all tacky and overblown, like the whole industry that has blown up around the personality of Elvis. Of course, Elvis is a pop-culture icon and I have always known who he was and what he stood for, but at the same time, I am at least a generation removed from him and the height of his career. As we toured Graceland, I, for the first time, really noticed how strikingly beautiful Elvis was, and began to understand how much of a charismatic performer he came to be. It was easy to see why he was regarded as The King.
In the afternoon, we headed downtown to the Mud Island Mississippi River Park and Museum, where we strolled through exhibits about historic riverboats, the Civil War and the Memphis blues scene before going back outside to walk and splash through the half-mile scale model of the lower Mississippi as it flows from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico.
From there, we walked several blocks in the sweltering heat and humidity to the luxurious Peabody Hotel, where we planned to watch the famous Peabody ducks parade from their fountain in the lobby, where they spend the day, to the elevator that would take them back up to their penthouse suite for the evening. We arrived soaked in perspiration with about 45 minutes until the big event, so we ordered drinks -- mint juleps for the grown-ups -- and found a cluster of chairs where we could play Uno.
When the Duckmaster rolled out the red carpet for his four feathered friends, Charlie, Clare and Natalie were allowed to take front-row seats with all the other kids who came to watch. Then, promptly at 5 p.m., with a lot of pomp and circumstance, the ducks scooted up the rug and into the elevator. The actual march took about 4 seconds flat, and there were so many people crowded around that I never actually got to see it. But Charlie said that one of the duck stopped right in front of him and sprayed him a little as she shook her feathers.
By the time we got back outside, we saw that dark clouds had gathered and a thunderstorm was mounting. We took a taxi back to our parked car, and headed back through the rain to the Heartbreak. We had planned to hang out by the pool for the rest of the evening, but the rain kept us inside, where the kids glued themselves to the Disney Channel -- they've been without TV for more than two weeks (gasp) -- until bedtime.
No comments:
Post a Comment