Are you singing the song yet?

 The day started out as usual... I went down to the lobby to get some breakfast for us to eat in the room. While we were slowly getting ready for the day there was a few texts between Lena, Ginny and I making plans for the day. I mentioned we had been wanting to see the Peabody Ducks but hadn't managed to get there yet and the others said they'd love to see them too so the plan was to meet in the lobby around 10.30 so we could make it there for 11am.

For those that don't know about the Peabody ducks they are a bit of an institution in Memphis. The Peabody Hotel, at it's current location, was opened in 1925. For the history of the ducks I will copy and paste ... it's interesting and pretty quirky.

"The Peabody is probably best known for a custom dating back to the 1930s. The General Manager of the time, Frank Schutt, had just returned from a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas. He and his friends found it amusing to leave three of their live English Call Duck decoys in the hotel fountain. The guests loved the idea, and since then, five Mallard ducks (one drake and four hens) have played in the fountain every day.Duckmaster giving the ducks a feeding 1940, a Bellman by the name of Edward Pembroke volunteered to care for the ducks. Pembroke was given the position of "Duckmaster" and served in that position until 1991. As a former circus animal trainer, he taught the ducks to march into the hotel lobby, which started the famous Peabody Duck March. Every day at 11:00 a.m., the Peabody Ducks are escorted from their penthouse home, on the Plantation Roof, to the lobby via elevator. The ducks, accompanied by the King Cotton March by John Philip Sousa, then proceed across a red carpet to the hotel fountain, made of a solid block of Italian travertine marble. The ducks are then ceremoniously led back to their penthouse at 5:00 p.m."

It was an interesting display with the Duckmaster loudly reciting the story and then going to get the ducks and march them down the red carpet into the fountain. It was very crowded so we went up on the balcony and got a relatively good view. After the show we headed to the gift shop and I bought a few things, because you know everything ends at the gift shop!

Time for lunch so we wandered a couple of blocks over to Beale St and into Miss Polly's Soul City Cafe where we had a lovely time eating and chatting... it's hard not to enjoy yourself surrounded by such lovely people! 

From here we wandered around Beale St going into some of the little knick knack souvenir shops, there's some really interesting stuff in these shops. I controlled the urge to buy everything I saw because the bags are getting very full and heavy!

After shopping we all sort of looked at each other with a "what now" kind of look and it was decided we'd head to The Flying Saucer for a post lunch drink! This place has a list of beer a mile long and would take forever to test them all but some have tried and succeeded so they have a plate attached to the wall in their honour. We, however, did not stay long enough for that.... we were all ready to head back to the Hotel for a nanny nap and John and Stephanie were due to arrive anytime as well.

Feeling refreshed after our nap we got a text to say John and Stephanie were in their room so we popped down to say hello, meanwhile the others were all ready to head out so we said we'd meet them at The Flying Saucer for a drink before going together to Silky O'Sullivan's. 
 
We hadn't seen John and Steph for 2 years so we chatted away merrily for ages then thought we'd best get going to meet the others at The Flying Saucer, as was the plan. As we left we got a text from the others letting us know they had decided to go straight to Silkys so the four of us went to The Flying Saucer for a drink and something to eat before heading over to Silky's..... gotta get some solids in before a big night out or I'll be useless tomorrow!!

Across the road and down a bit and we were a bit surprised that we had to pay a cover charge to get into Silkys.... oh well we want to go in so we paid it and in we went. What are friends for??? To save you seats in a packed bar!!! So of course our wonderful "gang" had seats saved for us, I feel a bit bad because we were supposed to be here hours ago and they must have been fighting people off for those chairs all that time! Anyway we listened to Barbara (awesome again) and chatted and drank! I had a little dance across the dance floor but not too much... saving all my moves for tomorrow! 

After the show Barbara came over and we organised to meet her at the Thai restaurant. We had to get a cab because it's a 10-15 min drive so all 8 of us squeezed into the taxi and had the most hilarious ride ever! 

Dinner was a fabulous time, wonderful food, fantastic company, lots of fun.... what more can you ask? Then there was the equally fun taxi ride back to the Hotel .... we had taken the number of the cab driver when he dropped us off, I'm surprised he wanted us back in his car, but he did turn up to take us home. 

One more day in Memphis and finally we'll have the whole gang back together!