Signs in Memphis

 I have one last little post about Memphis for you! Whenever we drive around a new town Travis always reminds me to keep my camera out to snap quick photos of old signs. I love them! I have asked him to turn around or pull over more than once! We went looking for this "Welcome to Memphis" record, and I was a little bummed the bushes were so high! Maybe I should carry shears with me to!

 Cute! I wonder if when it lights up it looks like the water is dripping on the right.

 This cutie is on top of Atomic Pest Control! Look at that big cheese!

 I'll pull over for a good mural too!

 Or a trailer painted like a pig. Not old but kind of crappy and funny.

 This one was the best! All the arms of the starburst rotate! I kind of wish we'd pulled over and taken video. It was so cool!

 And this was the funniest one we saw. Look at those toes! And imagine the body pose it would take to get that shot. Haha! So fancy!

We saw this boat on the way home, it seemed like the perfect farewell from Memphis! We had a great time Memphis! See you again soon!

Memphis: The Non Elvis Edition

Believe it or not, we made some time to do some non-Elvis related stuff while we were in Memphis. Of course we stopped by Flashback, which is a pretty incredible vintage store! They have AMAZING stuff!

 Isn't that cute? I love the plant too!

I loooooove that tv lamp! And the framed Elvis record.

 I really love that owl Kron lamp too! Wouldn't it look great with your Halloween decorations? I have a lamp like that already that is a pug and a poodle with the creepy glowing eyes.

 These wig heads are pretty amazing too. Those jewel eyes!

 We ate lunch at a vegan place called Imagine. I was so excited to see that there was a fully vegan place in Memphis! Last time we were in town we had a hard time finding anything we could eat. Yay!

 The place is mostly vegan junkfood, which is all right with me! We had their pig in a blanket appetizer and they were so good!! Probably my favorite part of the meal! Travis had a pretty good vegan peanut butter banana milkshake, too.

 I got their "Vegan Memphis" meal, because I LOVE a BBQ sandwich! It had coleslaw on it, and was delicious! So were the fries. The beans were weirdly sweet though. I only ate a few bites.

 Travis got the chicken fried steak with three sides: mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and corn casserole. Remember when all we used to eat where these yellow meals? Ha! It was all good! I liked the corn casserole best. We wanted to try the dessert (they have vegan brownie sundaes and banana splits!) but we were just too full! We'll definitely be back when were in town for Travis' family Christmas.

 Another place we visited was a cat rescue called House of Mewes. Travis' aunt and uncle told us about it. They are cat lovers too!

 This little kitty was so sweet and played with me through the cage for a long time!

 There were 85 cats in the building when we visited. You can probably imagine what that was like. We kept our visit short!

 I love that Travis is into cats. Here he is trying to read the name on her collar. I think this was Claudia! How cute is that?

 Those buckets for beds are such a good idea! We are going to look for a few like that for around our house, I KNOW our cat Scampi will love it!

 Of course we had to stop by the local Whole Foods so I could look at their Whole Body section for ideas. I liked that they had a little photo op site with their pumpkins!

 I don't know how I never knew Memphis had a drive in! There aren't any within 45 minutes of Nashville. Such a bummer because the drive in rules! I love how cheap it is, and how you can sit in your cozy car and eat tons of snacks you brought in. We brought a vegan cake! And fancy root beer!

 We saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 because it was the only thing that seemed ok. I ended up loving it! It was so freaking cute! Now I want to rent the first one. My favorite part was when you see the little marshmallow families. I think I squealed out loud, it was so cute.

The Heartbreak Hotel and Sun Studios!

I have an aunt that lives in Memphis who we usually stay with her when we visit. But I have always wanted to stay in the Heartbreak Hotel across from Graceland, so we decided to treat ourselves and stay there for our weekend trip!

For some reason I only took one photo of the lobby, but it was the most "on theme" part of the hotel. Look at those drapes! And you can see they are playing an Elvis movie on that cute tv. They have a channel playing only Elvis movies! That is all we watched for the entire weekend! I loved it!

The fitness center had cute framed photos of Elvis in his Kid Gallahad roll.

There were almost no actual vintage touches in the hotel, except this rad lamp in front of the elevator on our floor. I wanted to stick it in my suitcase! I've been lamp crazy lately!

Our room was just a basic hotel room, with an Elvis picture over the bed. It was a little disappointing, but the room was fine. They have themed suites which look amazing and you can see here. They are $500 a night though! Dang!

Downstairs there is a tiny "Jungle Room" that is just a bar. I wish they would have really followed through with the theme and made it look like the jungle room at Graceland!

At night they screened concert footage in the dining room. We had cocktails and watched Aloha From Hawaii on Saturday night. It was pretty great!

I wished I had the address of a fellow pug lover so I could have sent them this dorky postcard!

And for some reason I was in love with this painted light pole. It looks so cruddy and homemade, compared to how slick and polished Graceland is now. I'm surprised it hasn't been painted over!

In all the times we have visited Memphis, we had never been on the Sun Studio tour! We usually come during Elvis week in the summer and the tours are all booked, so we jumped at the chance to take a look inside.

While waiting for our tour to start we looked at all the cute photos in the alley.

The tour was ok. We went on the Motown Museum tour in the spring and it was so amazing it might have tainted us. It was fun seeing all the old head shots of memerobilia too.

I loved this picture of young Elvis at the fair!

I'll take that photo album, too.

My favorite moment of the tour was when a middle aged man pointed out this photo to his wife and daughter and said "Do you know who that is?" His wife said "Johnny Cash?" and he answered "Of course, look at those eyes! He always had the most BEAUTIFUL eyes!" It was cute.

Here I am being a dork and singing into the Elvis microphone. That little tape spot on the floor is where Elvis stood when he recorded "That's Alright Mama." Historic!

As our souvenir we bought this Million Daughter Quartet cd! I had never heard of it, but I love it! Not long after Elvis was sold to another label he came back to visit and jammed with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. They didn't know they were being recorded and are just goofing off and singing songs they like. I love it!

Graceland Continued!

 Once we went through the main house tour we had a few more stops to make. One exhibit was about Elvis' private planes. The Lisa Marie was huge! Elvis had a bedroom in the back, with a queen bed and everything! It wasn't very cool looking inside though, so I didn't take any photos. I loved the videos though. They said that once when Elvis realized his daughter Lisa Marie had never seen slow, he whisked her off to Colorado. She played in the snow for a few minutes, then they came back to Memphis.

 The smaller plane was much cuter inside! Look at those curtains! And the colorful seats!

The automobile museum was really cool! I'm not really into cars, but I was drooling over some of the ones from Elvis' collection.

Especially his pink Cadillac! This one was his mother's favorite and she liked to drive it around Memphis.

 There's a tv playing some of their home movies on a loop. I LOVED watching them. You can see some of them on youtube here. I especially loved the videos of them in Hawaii, you can see them around the 2 minute mark. What is better than Elvis in a striped tee and short shorts?

 There were a few other little exhibits on our tickets, mostly kind of lame, but I liked the Blue Hawaii one.

 Oh Elvis.

 Another fun thing about Graceland is the sheer amount of Elvis memorabilia! They have everything from Elvis nail clippers (You KNOW I brought home a pair!) to replica jumpsuits! Of course they didn't have my name on a mug. But they did have Olga.

 Everyone needs an Elvis chalice!

 I came pretty close to buying one of these TCB cups. I use cups that style for my smoothie every morning, so I would get use out of it. In the end it was just tooooo overpriced for me.

 They have everything you could ever think of with Elvis on it. And a few things you wouldn't. I kept telling Travis that I wanted to get the guitar filled with popcorn, and I think he thought I was making it up. Haha. What a weird souviner.

 One of these days I'll get one of these things, they are so funny! I think I like #4 the best! We did end up buying the overpriced photo they took of us before we started our tour. It was pretty cute, and I was in vacation mode!

 If you go to Graceland, wait to buy your souvenirs at this shop across the street from all the official ones. It has a lot of the same stuff, but much lower prices!

 We rented a car for the weekend, and it came with Sirius radio! And Sirius has an all Elvis station, so we decided to just listen to that for the weekend. It was fun! Like our Detroit trip where we only listened to Motown music.

 This weekend we also stopped by Elvis' first home in Memphis. I'm not sure how we hadn't gotten around to it before. Isn't it cute? I would love to see what it looks like inside!

 Look at that fence! I love the ironwork, and how they did the bricks! Those awnings are pretty great too. It is on a residential street, but has been bought by a musical preservation society or something, so no one lives there.

Another shot of those cool gates!