10 hours on a bus and I was finally in Memphis. I was looking a little worse for wear at this stage and was wearing a woolly hat. An old man with no teeth told me to take off my "sweat cap", saying that "in Memphis we don't wear no sweat caps."
I hired a bike and set out to explore the city. There is so much to see and do in Memphis that I really had to pick a few things and try and cram them all in!
My first stop was Sun Studios, a tiny little place where Elvis and Johnny Cash recorded their first hits. You might recognise it from the movie, "Walk The Line," where Cash went for an audition and almost didn't make it.
Memphis has such an incredible music history; it was also pretty much the birthplace of the blues. I went for a walk down the famous Beale Street which was cool, although now it just totally 100% tourist-crazy. B.B. King has a club and still plays there a couple of times a year though and there were a few little bands playing on the street.
The next day I got up early and went to see one of Memphis' saddest sights, the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot. It now holds the Civil Rights museum, but still has the balcony where it all happened.
During the first part of the tour they showed a film about the last few days of Dr. King and it was incredible. He was in Memphis speaking at a strike for sanitation workers and he knew there was a price on his head. This is the trailer.
While he was in Memphis Dr King gave his "I've been to the mountaintop" speech. The next day he was dead.
Watching the footage in that dark room I cried the hardest I have in a long long time. A true man of God, such incredible courage.
To be continued.
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