Day: May 5, 2015

Baseball is over for a while so I am at Patrice’s mercy for the next two plus weeks.  Today she wanted to visit the Mud Island River Museum (hmmm, can I read my book there?).  The museum is a short walk from the hotel and IT IS CLOSED ON MONDAYS!   A little reprieve for me, even if only for one day.  On our way back to the hotel we found that Memphis has a Fire Museum (see below).  The museum houses a series of exhibits including old firefighter equipment, videos and a wonderful memorial to the 343 firefighters who died in the 9/11 tragedy.  Some of the information made me wonder about the intelligence of the people living in this town (notice the 911 information sign below).  Like most museums you exit into the gift shop so I made myself an honorary member of the Memphis FD (see below).

After a brief rest at the hotel we met our guide for the Barbecue Tasting Tour provided by http://www.Tastinroundtown.com.  Tours are limited to 12 people and the idea of being carted around town eating BBQ cuisine sounded like fun.  We arrived promptly at the meeting place but wondered if we made a mistake since no one else was there.  Our guide, Lance, welcomed us to the tour and told us we were the only people who had signed up.  We had our personal chauffeur and tour guide.  Lance is Italian and originally from New York and got to Memphis 6 years ago via Indiana and Chicago.  He certainly could have made me believe he was a native from Memphis since he was a cornucopia of information about Memphis history and culture.  He filled us in on the subtle differences between the various BBQ offerings in the city and how they differ from what we would encounter in Kansas City, Texas and other places.  Not only was he informative he was quite funny. That’s him pictured with us below.

After the BBQ tour we went back to the hotel to work out and to see if we could break even for the day caloric wise (not a chance of that).  Feeling much less guilty now and wondering were we might find some pecan pie.

Robert