Drinking Man's Travel Company: Ground Zero Blues Club and on to Memphis

I apologise if some of you may have seen this before. I did most of it about 3 am this morning whilst a little bit under the weather.

We had one of the most memorable nights of our trip so far last night. Part owner of the Ground Zero Blues Club, Morgan Freeman didn't turn up, however, we did meet the other owner Warren Ables, a candidate for Governor of Mississippi. We also met Rusty Hilger and Marcus DuPree, two gridiron players. DuPree is supposedly the greatest 'EVER' high school football player in the world.

Provided you liked your food deep fried or cooked on the hot plate, they served all the grease you could want. The closest thing to a vegetable was a deep fried green tomato. The beers were good though, only $2.50 a stubbie.

The place was thumping until 2 am, so it wasn't any good going to bed as our rooms were directly above it. Check out the photographs.

This is Tony's idea of sharing a bed.

Miracle of miracles, when we got up, the cars were still in the car park. No wheels or doors, but the rest was still there. This is where we had to park them over night in the seediest part of town.

We also left our mark on the place.

We checked out the Hopson Cotton Mill below,

and then headed off for Memphis. Couldn't go past Cracker Barrel though, and at 1 pm had the obligatory two pork chops, two eggs, hash browns and sourdough bread for breakfast.

As we arrived in the outskirts of Memphis, we missed the turn-off for the downtown area and that's when the Muppet factor kicked in. After thinking we were on a ring road, but were really 18 kilometres down the road to Nashville, we decided that it might be a good idea to turn around. Our 20 minute trip from the Cracker Barrel turned into 50 minutes.

We finally arrived at our hotel, The Peabody at about 3 pm. This hotel is famous for it's duck parade. Apparently, many years ago, ducks wandered in off the street and got into the fountain in the centre of the foyer. Since then it's been a tradition to keep them in a special area on the roof and each day bring them down at 11 am, and march them back at 5 pm each day.

One of the boys gave the porter a $1 tip when he dropped the bags off. The porter then said, "That's all you're giving me?"

Had a few beers in the bar. A bit of a shock having to pay $7.50 each after only paying $2.50 at the blues club. Suppose the surroundings were a little bit better.