Memphis has been bustling for centuries, being well-connected by road and train and surrounded by cotton-growing fields. A hub for the confederate army during the Civil War, Memphis is also where Martin Luther King died. Music courses through its streets, etched by the vicissitudes of racial justice and rewritten by the birthing of another king of rock ‘n roll, Elvis Presley. Memphis offers a lot for free to tourists today. I recommend five free attractions and one paid attraction.
Let’s start with the FREE of cost.
The Memphis Sign
You only pay for parking at Mud Island Park (the google maps destination). Everything that follows is free. You tread along constructed rivers and adjoining city names, reading history trivia and maps. It’s fascinating by Interstate 64 bridge’s shadow over the Mississippi River. The park ends at the Memphis Sign.
Tip: Don’t climb the letters for photos. Your bodies won’t show. An adjacent board tells you to stand away from the sign for the best photographs.
The Ducks
What’s the draw about ducks waddling from a fancy hotel’s elevator to its fountain, especially when it involves a half-hour wait sitting with children, crying? Let me explain. The Peabody Hotel had an incident when their guest walked in with ducks. Lined with fancy shops and restaurants, the ducks didn’t belong. It seemed fitting to Memphis culture, transforming an odd experience into a not-odd-at-all tradition. Eleven in the morning and five in the evening, the ducks arrive daily. Crowds line the red carpet from the middle elevator to the fountain a solid half hour before time. The staff manages and entertains with an odd pride. Children will love it.
The Beale Street
Visit Beale Street after sundown and into the night. We were visiting with time-limited children for the atmosphere, not the partying. Children can’t enter here after nine, and those already present must exit by eleven. We arrived here at six-thirty, walking along the main street with the trams and the lit carriages, a pedestrian street. The live performer’s music booms from restaurants, the flashing signs glitter, and the gift shops line each side, contrasting my image of Memphis, which I lovingly call a sleepy city where we can get between most places in fifteen minutes.
The experience is electrifying, treading the expanse from Elvis Presley’s statue in Elvis Presley Park to W. C. Handy’s statue. The experience is free until you sit down to try their exotic drinks, which we didn’t.
The Light Show
Check out Beale Street Crossing at the Mississippi River next, arriving five minutes before the half-hour or the hour when the already-lit Bridge (Interstate 64) breaks into a light show. We were here on a cold, windy night, and the show started with a solidarity display of blue and yellow for Ukraine. The show lasts ten minutes and repeats every half-hour until ten-thirty.
The Pyramid
The BassPro shops at the Pyramid aren’t exactly free. You can sure visit it for free, especially on rainy days. A highly rated hotel and an observatory for city and river views can be found inside, along with the arcade-like shop. We skipped the observatory and roamed the big sports shop, where our children turned this attraction into not-free, as they picked out gifts for themselves. Pyramid rules Memphis’s skyline. I call it Memphis’s Eiffel Tower because you can see it from everywhere.
Experience these for free.
For a price, Memphis hosts live shows and performances: Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home, and other museums around music and cotton. Graceland will have the steepest price tag. We skipped these for the one that I insist you must visit.
The one paid attraction I recommend …
Time stands still at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis since April 4, 1968: a turbulent time in American history when African Americans lived a segregated life devoid of fundamental civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King visited Memphis to help with the sanitation department issues. Boarded in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, Dr. King would conduct business on the Balcony, where he breathed his last moments that evening, shot by a bullet from a boardinghouse window across the street. They have frozen both the hotel and the boardinghouse.
You enter it to witness the National Civil Rights Museum, and it begins with the start of slavery. It melts into the cultural clothes and music the African Americans tried to preserve. It rings with speeches from Dr. King, including his last before he died. The building across shows the rental, the bathroom from where the shooter shot him, and how authorities captured him in London a month later.
This stop will leave a lasting impact on your psyche, worth every penny, and it will force thoughts for days. Even the gift shop will hold you there longer. The crowd size was the only negative, but the museum is deservedly famous.
Other Attractions and Restaurants
Other attractions are Overton Park, Overton Square, and the Crystal Shrine Grotto, all free.
My favorite Indian restaurant (for authentic Punjabi food) in Memphis, which we repeatedly ate at, is the India Palace. Try their Kadhi Pakoda. Taste the chocolate Banana bread at Otherlands Coffee. And the best breakfast award in Memphis goes to Brother Junipers.
To see the city’s oldest restaurant, visit the Arcade, though we skipped this stop.
Memphis never filled my bucket list. But I am glad we visited here. And so should you.
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