NY eve in Nashville

Last day of the 2011. Today we started off with no real plans, so checked with front desk to see what plantation tour they would recommend. We ended up going and spending a couple of hours at Belle Meade. If anyone is interested in race horses Google this place, many many of the big winners have blood lines back to this farm. Belle Meade are is now like a suburb of Nashville, filled with lots of lots of millionaire homes. At one time it was a plantation with so much land that there was a 18 mile stone fence surrounding the property. Now it is a tiny fraction of this, but still a very impressive mansion stands with much of the original things inside. We did a tour that included the inside of the mansion, and what a tour guide we had. Anne was around 80, and so good. She said that there is no script that they are given to follow, they are given books to read on horse racing, parties, and the family history and they can choose to educate us a little on whatever they find interesting. She said the parties were so boring there was really nothing much to tell us, very funny. Anyway one more piece of Tennessee history for us to go home with.

From here we took some back roads where we saw garages that were much bigger than our home (one 6 car garage!). We were going to a small town called Franklin for lunch and to look around. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and a nice day for the 30 minute drive to Franklin. This is a small town that has really grown into a tourist destination now. Many old buildings have been preserved, and most of course include some kind of shopping store now, or a restaurant. We spent a couple of hours wandering around here, I found my earrings that I had been looking for. I like to find something that will remind me of our visit when I wear them, and this would be my Christmas present from Andre this year. These earrings are made out of guitar strings, so of course I will think of Nashville/Memphis when I wear them. After lunch we headed back to our hotel in Nashville for a nap before our evening plans, I really wanted to make it to midnight!

We had been told it would be safest to take the hotel shuttle downtown tonight, rather than drive our own car. So off we go about an our before our Grand Ole Opry show is due to start to look around downtown before it gets to crowded. Tonight there is a free concert starting at 7PM downtown. We have tickets to see the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium which is also downtown, so it works out perfectly for us, we'll go to the Opry and then go to the concert. Broadway is not too busy yet when we first get there, We get quite close to the stage, but we don't figure we will get this close later. Off next to the Opry, tonight is a live show that is broadcast on the radio, so we get to hear commercials and everything. Each entertainer comes on for one or 2 songs and then the next person comes on. We saw about 16 acts, but didn't know any of them except Jett Williams, who is Hank Willams daughter. We had just read about her at the Country Music Hall of Fame the day before so it was interesting to see her in person. This is his daughter that was put in foster care when Hank and her mother had both died, she was 2. She only found out when she was 21 who her birth father was, I remember hearing about this in the news a few years ago as well. It was fun to see, the show opened with someone acting like Minnie Pearl doing the opening act. I`m also glad it was at this theatre, the Grand Ole Opry has a new theatre built quite a few miles from downtown, but sometimes they still use the old Ryman theatre, which is where we were.

Following the Opry we went downtown, wow the people there now is crazy. Lots of police presence, and after a few mega concerts in Moncton it wasn't bad. Because of the set up here though it was much more crowded than Moncton. Here is was one street that was closed for about 7 blocks, so everyone was in 1 very long block, and it was hard to move around once you got into the crowd. We started of by going for supper, it was now after 9:30 so we figured if we ate now it would be good timing to watch some of the concert and see midnight in. We ended up at Jacks BBQ right downtown, we were so late that the line ups weren't too bad, and another excellent BBQ meal. After supper we decided to hit the street and see how close we could get to the stage, well that didn't last long, it was crazy! The worst part was where the line ups were right across the street for lining up for beer. We decided to back track and just stand near one of the big screens that had been set up on the street to watch the show, the problem with this is the sound was not good, we have been spoiled with the Stones and U2, this really did not sound very good. The headliner act was Lynyrd Skynyrd, he was on stage from about 11PM through to the new year. Really by the end we couldn't even hear him, which was too bad, but we did make it until midnight, watched the music note drop (instead of the ball in New York), saw a good fireworks show then caught a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi ride was funny, 2 young girls ran up to the cab as we were leaving and asked if they could get in with us, they were going very close to our hotel so they joined us. They were from Nashville and were on there way to get out of their party dresses and into clothes to party for the night. I can just imagine what time they got home! We were probably getting up to start the day. A great end to 2011 and start to 2012.  Tomorrow off to Memphis

Off to Nashville

December 30

Another great day. We drove into downtown and parked the car and started the day at the Country Music Hall of Fame. We decided to do the tour that included the audio tour as well as an hour at Studio B. This museum is a beautiful fairly new building that they are expanding in the next 3 years to be twice the size it is now. We spent about one hour touring the main building, and then took the bus over to Music Row, where Studio B is located. This is the RCA Studio where many many number one hits were recorded, Elvis recorded more than 200 records here. It was a good tour, and nice to see a little more of Nashville on the way there. Back to the main museum and we spent about another 3 hours here, and there was still so much more we could have seen and listened to. Anyone who is interested in the history of country music would love it here. The museum was excellent, took us right from the history through to current times.

By now it is nearly 2PM and our muffins from breakfast are long gone. We head over to Broadway to first pick up our tickets for the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night that we had ordered, wow what a lot of people! There is a college football game here today and the streets are packed with people dressed in maroon colours, hardly anyone from the other team. Mississippi is the maroon color, no idea who the other team was. There is a section along Broadway that is all Honky Tonk bars, these are all packed with people, but it was fun to hear all the live music. No cover charge in the day, hopefully we'll get to visit one more tomorrow. By now we are really hungry, go into one restaurant that did not have a line outside, turns out the line is inside and it will be an hour wait. We asked the hostess where we can go off Broadway that there won't be such a wait, found a great spot a couple of blocks over After lunch we decide to brave the crowds and head back to Broadway, now there is a whole block party set up with a band playing, really fun atmosphere. We have decided not to go to the football game this year, though I am sure it would have been fun.

Next up shopping, yep believe it or not we are off shopping. The city of Lebanon is about 30 minutes from Nashville, and this is where the outlet shopping is. It is an easy drive and we spend a few hours here. It is not huge like we saw in San Antonio, but definitely big enough for us. The only problem we ran into is we could not remember our limits for going home since we are only here for 6 nights and not a full week! We both got new golf shoes at the Nike Outlet, and a few other things around, but we only have so much space in our suitcases, and so much $ to spend. Back to the hotel at around 8:30, walked to another restaurant not far from the hotel and call it a night. Tomorrow is NYE, forecast is 60 degrees again, so should be a great night to spend outside and bring in the new year.

Memphis Day 2

Today is our last full day in Memphis. This morning we did not smell the tar in our room when we woke up, so I guess it is back up to a 2 star again, but there were no muffins at the free breakfast, so maybe back down to a 1 star? Oh well, I'm sure we will not starve. First stop of the day is to take the trolley car, there is a loop that goes around Memphis, it costs $1.00 every time you get on. This was fun, you get to see more of Memphis that we hadn't seen yet, and ride a trolley car from the 1920's.

 

We looped around to the National Civil Rights museum and got off there. What an amazing museum this was. The museum is at the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot and killed, the balcony where he was shot, and the hotel front are all still there, but the inside has all been changed and is where the museum is. The museum covers the entire civil rights history, not just Martin Luther King. Really a fantastic museum, so hard to believe most of this has happened in our lifetimes, in many ways our world has changed for the better. We spent around 3 hours in this museum before we had enough, we definitely could have spent much more time here if we wanted to read more.

 

After the museum we walked to a diner a couple of blocks away that is the oldest diner in Memphis. When you sat in the booth you definitely knew it was an old diner, there was no padding! It was really a step back in time, fun to see. After this we continued on along the trolley loop to the tourist information centre, here we picked up maps for our drive to Nashville, and other brochures.

 

Next we walked back to our hotel, picked up the car and headed off to Nashville along the Music Highway. Yep, that is what the highway is called. This is a 4 lane highway that may be one of the busiest highways I have ever driven. It was not stop and start, but it was constant traffic, and a lot of it was truckers. So, it was a long 3.5 hour drive. We did make one stop part way for ice cream to break up the trip at a pretty cool spot that was an old country store, lots of fun things to look at. Get to our hotel, I got this on Priceline, it is a beautiful Marriott about 3 miles from downtown. Definitely an upgrade from our last hotel, but nicer hotels always nickel and dime you, I hate that. Parking is $21 per day, no free wi fi in the room, not free breakfast, and all of these things we had free at our 2 star in Memphis. But, the room is very very nice, we have a view of a huge university football stadium, too bad nothing is going on there while we are here. Off to diner at a place I had bought on groupon, which was very good, though again too much food. Lucky for us it was within walking distance of our hotel so we did not need to drive. So now ready to have some fun in Nashville starting tomorrow. Oh, here is something I got by email yesterday, we will be there!!

 

“Can't be here for the main event? We're taking it to you! Tune in to CNN or CNN.com at 11:10pm/CT on Saturday, December 31 to watch some of the music, the big midnight "Music Drop" and fireworks as we rock in to 2012 in Music City!”

Memphis Day 1

 

Dec 28 Of course we were up early this morning. Loaded some places of interest in the GPS as we are still not sure what we are doing today and off we go. Had our muffins that we bought in Montreal that we didn't eat yesterday for breakfast because they let us into the lounge in Montreal. It is now about 8:30 and most of the major things we want to do today do not open until 10AM. Outside we go, and what is this, we have to scrape the rear windshield, wow it did get cold last night, and of course the car rentals here do not provide scrapers in their cars. Oh and I forgot to mention that the hotel has now been downgraded to a 1.5 start for us, they are working on the roof and this morning they started warming up tar, what a lovely smell to wake up to ! So on with the day,

I had read about a cemetery tour that was highly recommended so decided to do this. It is called Elmwood Cemetery, reminded us of Elaine at home, but this is many many times the size of Elmwood in Moncton. They have a 1 hour audio tour that drives you around the cemetery and points out some of the more famous people that have been buried here, which really gives you a great history lesson of Memphis. We both really liked the tour. Some interesting facts we found out, there was a steamboat accident here where more people were killed than were on the Titanic. More people died in Memphis from yellow fever than the civil war and a couple of others combined. There is quite a large section that has been used as mass graves, people needed to be buried so quickly that they were put in these graves, very impressive when you see how big the area is. Another interesting thing was they moved cemeteries at one point, dug up the coffins to move them, wrote everyone's names in chalk on the coffins, and it rained that night, so none really knows who is who for sure. There is also a swing set beside one of the markers, this is from many years ago when a 5 year old boy lost his father, the caretaker put up the swing so it would be easier for him when he and his mother came to visit. This would be a beautiful spot to come and visit in the spring and summer, the trees are amazing, they actually have a tree tour as well, but we are really out of season to do this.

Enough of our first stop, it is now 10AM and off we head to Graceland. Last time I was here I parked at a little shopping area 2 minutes from the $10 parking that we are supposed to use, and we did this again. To get into Graceland you first line up for tickets, we got to skip this line as I had bought tickets online, then you line up for a bus to take you across the street to the actual Graceland mansion. From here you have an audio tour that takes you through the downstairs of the home, you are not allowed upstairs. Everything is still as it was in the 70's. The kitchen is funny to see the old appliances, though I am sure they were state of the art back then. You see the jungle room which is very famous, dining and living rooms, and then many of his records and awards are on display. I have done this tour before, but I still enjoyed seeing it again, and this time it was decorated for Christmas so it was a little different. Outside you get to see a racquet ball court he had put in later, the horses were outside as well, and the meditation garden where Elvis, his parents, and Grandmother are laid to rest. Lots of flowers and cards here. From here we went back across the road and toured the car, airplane, and a couple of other exhibits they have set up. It was a good tour, twice is enough for me though, but last time I only saw Graceland home, I didn't do any of the other exhibits.

By now it is 2PM, nothing to eat since our muffin at breakfast so we are off to find another famous BBQ place. This is outside of downtown called Interstate BBQ. You know you have found a good spot when there are lots of people eating at 2PM. Andre decides to order this huge sampler plate, I get a BBQ sandwich which is pulled pork and coleslaw on a bun with BBQ sauce. Andre had brisket, beef and pork ribs, pulled beef and pulled pork, and some sausage thing with bread, beans and coleslaw as sides. My very favourite was the pulled pork sandwich, which I split with Andre and tried everything else as well. Very very yummy. We are so full after this it is crazy, oh and we topped it off with sharing a piece of homemade pecan pie, yum.

From here we decide to go to Sun Record studios, I hadn't planned on this as I had done this before too, but we were kind of in Elvis mode now so we went to see how it all started. This is a really enjoyable tour, you get a lot of history about how this era of music all started, not only Elvis. We heard people on the tour say that they went to Graceland, but the lines were so long just for tickets that they decided to come to this tour today, I guess we got there at the right time, and I'm really glad we had prepaid tickets. From here back to the hotel for a nap because I really want to stay awake for the basketball game we have tickets for tonight.

 

So we are now back from the game. It was about a 10 minute walk to the FedEx stadium from our hotel which was fantastic. The game was really good, it was Memphis vs Oklahoma City. This was their home opener which I am sure made it even have more special things going on during the game. I had about a 12 year old kid sitting next to me, and he fell asleep on my shoulder during the 2^nd quarter, pay back I call it. It was quite funny. I though managed to stay awake for the whole game!! The half time show was an upcoming famous Memphis band called Free Sol. Run the other way if you are invited, not our cup of tea, think gangster, rapper and you've got it.  Forgot our binoculars which Andre was disappointed as the cheerleaders were in cute skimpy outfits. We were close enough to the court that we did not need them. This was so much more entertaining than the last game we saw in San Antonio, the crowd was so into the game, more like Boston. Memphis ended up losing by 4 points in the end I think, but it was really entertaining. After the game we walked along Beale street, fun looking at all the lights at night, then home to call it a night, another fun day planned for tomorrow.

Off to Tennessee

December 27 2011

So after 4 days in Arundel basically doing nothing more than eat and drink we are now on our way to Memphis/Nashville to do more of the same! Last night we spent the night in a hotel picked up on hotwire, that turned out to be the same hotel that we stayed in last year and met our friends at on the way to Texas. Lots of memories, but so much better weather this year! Last night was a Shrek marathon on TV so we watched a couple of movies, and called it a very early night.

Up early this morning to return the car rental, and get to the airport. We have now done the Montreal to Toronto portion and are sitting in the lounge in Toronto waiting for our flight to Memphis. We have quite a wait here, the flight was changed a couple of weeks ago, which now means 4 hours in Toronto, disappointing as we were supposed to be in Memphis originally by now I think. Andre has hooked up our phone so that any messages are sent to our email, just received a message to phone American Express fraud center. I just got off the phone, this is the second time we have had a possible compromise, but this time everything is OK, yes we have bought that much liquor and gas lately??? So one crisis over, lets see what is next. Will give an update tonight from Memphis, we're hoping to visit the Peabody duck parade at 5PM, though I think our schedule may be too tight and that may have to wait until tomorrow. Until later...

Arrived safely in Memphis, picked up our rental car, and found our hotel. This place is definitely a 2.5 start, last night was supposed to be a 2.5 star in Montreal, but it was more like a 4 star, tonight is truly a 2.5 star, oh well we are only here for 2 nights and won't be in the room much. We arrived at the hotel at 4:30, unloaded the car and headed straight for the Peabody hotel, we could see the sign from our hotel. We knew the duck parade was at 5:00PM and I had read you should show up at least 30 minutes early, knew we wouldn't make that but we were fine. This is a beautiful old hotel, it reminds me of the Banff Springs, only on a much smaller scale. The hotel lobby is beautiful, surrounded by an open walkway above that you can see down into the lobby area. There was a beautiful Christmas tree and decorations set up, the tree had to be at least 25 feet tall. In the morning 5 ducks are marched down into the fountain in the lobby, and at 5PM they lay the red carpet out again for them to march back to the elevator and back up to the rooftop for the night. This has been going on now for over 50 years, and it is quite the tradition to go and see the Peabody ducks when in Memphis. So, now this has been crossed off the list.

Next we walk along Beale street, the neon lights are just starting to come on, and it really isn't very busy. We found a great old bar with a guy playing the guitar, there are people hired on the street to try to get you into the bars, and this guy told us it was happy hour so in we went. We ask the bar tender what the happy hour specials are, neither of us have any idea what he said, our southern accents are not yet up to par. So Andre had a local beer, I had a gin & tonic, total bill $6.00 with tax, OK much more reasonable than South Beach in Miami! Tips to bartender and guitar player and we decide we should go back to the hotel and get ready for some BBQ for supper.

We had heard about a place called Rendezvous that is famous for its ribs, but didn't see it on our walk, so back to the hotel we go for a change of shoes and check out where this place is. We walk by all the same poor people living on the streets asking for money, this would be a cold place to live on the street. We have been asked from money here now as many times as we were asked for hair braiding in Nassau, it is getting a little old. They start off asking if you need help with directions, and then it turns into do you have any spare change. So, more comfortable walking shoes on and we find the restaurant we are looking for. It is now 7Pm and there is a 30 minute line up for dinner. This is a huge restaurant that you eat in the basement, but at one time I think it would have filled up with 3 floors. The second floor did have some big parties here, but the basement is huge! It is in a tricky place to find down an alley. We decide on ribs since this is their speciality and we are not disappointed. The only funny thing is you get no knife and fork, you are served on paper plates, a plastic spoon for the coleslaw and beans that are served as sides, no butter for the bread and you are off. We asked a waiter for cutlery and they told us to just tear the ribs apart, OK when in Rome.....very messy, but very yummy. I especially loved the sides. These ribs were done with a rub that was delicious, but they also had BBQ sauce on the tables, I prefer mine in a sauce, so just to be even messier I added lots of sauce to my plate. Very yummy start to our eating adventures. After dinner just went back to the hotel, a busy day planned for tomorrow.

Back to NB

Up early again, pack up, a quick breakfast and we are on our way to the airport. We share a taxi with one of the girls from our trip to the airport. We run into a few people from our trip either leaving or continuing on to more adventures and say our good-byes.

We are in Miami right now, waiting for our connection to Montreal. We will overnight in Montreal and take the early flight to Moncton tomorrow and then back to work and reality tomorrow afternoon.

It has been a lot of fun, not somewhere I would go back to I don't think, but I'm glad we did it. We met some nice people, saw lots of new things, and experienced the most heat I ever want to. This style of trip is not really for us, 30 people in a group is just too many, there were some people we never even met, and I hate following along a guy with a sign with 30 other people in airports, maybe it reminds me too much of the Tauck Tour days in Banff.

Who knows what is up next, this was a good tour to meet lots of people that travel to many different places, I don't think anyone picks the Amazon for their once in a lifetime trip, so many have been all over the globe. Next up is Andres pick for the big 50. We'll see where that takes us.........

Back to Lima

2AM wakeup call and 3AM departure for our 1 hour 40 minute drive to Iquitos to catch the plane back to Lima. What was a very good trip ended on a bad note with lots of people so disappointed in this departure time. We all felt we had lost a day on the trip by arriving to the amazon on the night flight and leaving on the early flight. There are only 2 flights a day and they really should co-ordinate them together. They tried to tell us we would have more time to spend in Lima, none of us were taking this trip to spend time in Lima, so it was a disappointing end.

I think we are here too early since no one is here at all

When we arrived in Lima 5 of us walked around together, Andre and I said we would help a woman whose debit card was not working try to get that sorted out, and 2 other tagged along. I love doing things like this if you don't have other plans, we ended up in 2 different banks, and finally she was able to get some money out. Just the different ways people line up, having guys with guns in the banks, watching the locals go about their daily business, great to watch. We had loaned this woman $100.00 on the ship and she so wanted to pay us back before we left, I told her I trusted her to send us a cheque. Anyway we now have somewhere to stay if we ever go to Santa Barbara. One of the guys said he would never lend money, can you imagine being in a foreign country and not having any money! Anyway it all worked out fine, and Ingrid now has lots of money to spend on souvenirs, she is off on the second portion of the trip going to Cuzco and beyond.

From here we went to a local restaurant for lunch and ceviche, their local speciality. I am still not fantastic health wise so order pasta, but Andre has the ceviche and says it is good, the presentation is beautiful.

Back to the hotel for a nap and then the 2 of us get a taxi into town to the water fountains. This is so much fun, it is a large park with water fountains all over the place, and 2 huge ones that change their jets/spray to music and lights, it was very pretty. I think we saw 4 brides and a lot of graduates getting their pictures done, is really was pretty. The locals certainly take advantage of this spot, I don't think we saw 20 tourists while we were there, and hundreds of locals. The funniest were what we called the lawn police. There is no walking on the grass and every time someone stepped on the grass the lawn police would blow a whistle, which meant we heard lots of whistle blowing. You also walk under one of the fountains, it is a half circle/arc/tunnel that you walk through which was fun. The most fun was watching the kids in their area, they have a circle with about 60 feet diameter made up of smaller circles with spaces in between. Well the jets would go off to the time of the music and you were never sure when it would start. The middle was “safe” and you would not get wet. Lots of laughs and squeals as the jets would start and grow and stop, you would think you were safe and it would do one more squirt, we spent quite a bit of time watching this, the laughter was contagious.

We were picked up by taxi again and asked him to take us back to the old part of the city to take some pictures at night of the presidential palace square, he dropped us off and just circled around the park while we took some pictures. The area is much prettier at night than it is in the day.

Back to the hotel and we are just too tired to even think about eating, off to bed as we have another early wakeup call as we leave for the airport at 7AM.

Giant Lilly Pad & fire

This morning we were allowed to sleep in until breakfast at 8AM. They had birdwatching up on deck at 6AM, and going to bed by 8:30PM of course we were up there at 6AM. The mornings are unbelievably peaceful here. Very rarely do the dugout canoes that have little motors on them travel at nighttime and we have always been tied to shore at night so no motors from our ship. We have not seen any other tourist boats all week, and only a couple of barges have gone by, so little traffic it is amazing on such big rivers.

We saw our first storks this morning, and more parrots going by, so amazing to see parrots in the wild.

Porcupine

After breakfast we went to visit the Amazonian giant lily pads. I have seen these before in Kew garden in London, but nothing like seeing them on the Amazon. There were literally hundreds of these on the river, many in different stages of flowering. The flowers last 72 hours and go through 3 different colors until they die, and the lily pads themselves live for 6 weeks. Again we were met by locals in their dugout canoes selling their crafts, again Andre and I have no money on us, we will never learn.

Just before we arrived at the lily pads a small boat with an outboard motor from our ship arrived with the 3 people that had stayed behind for this excursion and they came along for the rest of the morning.

Come to find out there had been a fire on board and they were forced to evacuate. The passengers did not know what had happened, and the crew handled this amazingly. We knew something was up because when we got back on board our cabin hadn't been made up while we were out, and this was the first time this had happened. The fire started in the engine room, and we heard that the locals came to help in their dugout canoes, on the way back to the ship from our excursion Andre noticed that one of these little canoes had a pump on board, I guess he was one of the ones that came to help. The couple with the room closest to the engine room are in a bit of a mess. They have had to move cabins to one of the guide’s cabins, and their clothes have been washed once and don't seem to smell so bad. I don't think they will ever get the smell of smoke out of their suitcases, so their clothes may smell terrible again tomorrow. I am so glad this happened on the last day, all of the false alarms during the week, I wonder if this was brewing all week. I don't know how well I would have slept had this happened earlier. Andre has a pair of sneakers that I think are ruined from the fire extinguisher material, we left our sneakers on deck when we finished excursions and the crew would wash them for us, he forgot to pick his up the night before so they may be finished.

Anyway now off for our afternoon excursion after all this excitement. This afternoon we are fishing for piranhas, you are given a stick with fishing line on it and a hook with a little bait. You shake up the water a little bit with he end of your stick and then basically just try to set the hook when you feel a bite. We were having a competition between the 2 skiffs on who could catch the most for supper. Our skiff caught 7, and the other skiff caught 13 in 1 hour. We certainly had a lot of laughs. Andre was doing catch and release, he caught 4 that he got up in the air and they jumped off. I had lots of nibbles but couldn't get the hook set. The teeth on these things are really scary, I would not have wanted to fall in!

Back to the boat for supper and you wouldn't have known there had been a pretty big fire except for a little smell that lingered. Lucky for us our cabin was on the bow, and the engine room was on the stern so we had very little smell in our room.

This afternoon we also arrive to where the Ucayalli and Maranon Rivers come together to form the Amazon River. Really not too exciting except to say that we have been to where the river starts. We were surprised at home fast the currents were on all of these large rivers, and so much erosion, there were many dead head logs and trees in the rivers that made travelling in the dark dangerous and we rarely did this. Normally we were simply tied up to a large tree for the nights.

Our last supper together on board and it is an early night because we have a 2AM wake up, yep 2AM, yuck.