Curate Your Own Adventure

I’ve decided to separate my posts on Memphis considering we visited two extremely different heritage sites/museums. Both, I believe, deserve their own focus. The first I want to review is Graceland – the former home of Elvis Presley. Just to be clear it is a massive tourist site drawing around 800 people a day in off season and up to 2 000 during peak season. You will find tacky shops and just about everything Elvis-themed under the sun. This, however, should not detract you from visiting. I wanted to see Graceland for two reasons. One, I’ve heard it’s a beautiful house and two, I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons sitting at home with nothing to watch on TV but old Elvis movies.

At Graceland you have the opportunity to tour his house and the surrounding gardens, and see a little museum. The tour is very high tech with each visitor receiving an iPad to guide them around. I really enjoyed the tour. It was well paced and gave a nice overview of everything. I don’t like those audio guides that spend 10-15 minutes in front of each object/room. All it achieves, in my opinion, is congestion.

Graceland is also where Elvis is now buried and right at the end of the tour you can visit the meditation gardens and pay your respects. In total, the tour lasted around an hour. Ignoring the multitude of gift shops at the visitor center the house itself has been managed very well. It’s a tastefully done tour and a great site filled with music heritage.

I’ll post in a couple of days or so on the National Civil Rights Museum also located in Memphis.