Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig

What a vacation!!! I'll spend the next few days posting about our trip. We just did too much to cover it in one post.

The drive from Central IL to Memphis was pretty uneventful. Like usual, Lili was a great little traveler. She was always happy to get out of the van and stretch her legs, but was just as happy to get back in and keep going.

We hit Memphis around 2:30 p.m. It didn't take us as long to get there as we thought it would which was really nice. What wasn't so nice was the 104 degrees on the thermometer when we arrived. So we checked into our hotel and proceeded to put on our suits and make our way to the pool. Now, had the water in the pool not been so warm, it would have been much more refreshing, but it was certainly much better than the air temp.

After a couple hours in the pool we decided to get cleaned up and hit the first of 3 BBQ establishments on our trip. Everyone should know that I'm not a big BBQ fan. I like BBQ sauce and I will eat some of the meats, but my least favorite of all BBQ meats is ribs. Therefore, my report will be primarily from the perspective of my husband, my sister-in-law and her man.

Our first try of Memphis BBQ was a restaurant called Rendezvous. I believe Rendezvous was named the #1 BBQ restaurant in Memphis, although I'm not quite sure who gave it that ranking. Rendezvous is located in downtown Memphis and the entrance to the restaurant is in an alley. Obviously, few people have trouble finding it because there were people waiting outside for their name to be called. The wait was anticipated to be about an hour and my initial thought was that the food must be awesome because people are actually standing outside in the heat for the food. We chose not to stand outside, but instead made our way upstairs to the bar area. Every table there was taken and Lili wanted nothing more than to run around. That, of course, didn't happen and she actually handled it pretty well. We spotted a table that opened up and headed that direction with Lili in my arms. However, a few guys also spotted the table, looked up and saw us with a small child and proceeded to sit down at the table. At this point I'm not quite sure how I feel about this place or the people there. However, a few minutes later, another table opens up. Score!!! We sat patiently with some cool drinks and got comfortable for the wait. To our surprise, they called our name within about 20 minutes and we were off to partake in our first BBQ feast. Our waiter comes to the table to take our order and we all found ourselves wondering if he enjoyed his job at all. Getting him to crack a smile was quite a task, but Lili managed to get a little smile out of him by using her manners of "peas" (please) and "tank" (thank you). After getting our drinks we placed our order. Ribs for everyone, but add some chicken to mine. We really didn't wait long before the food arrived and I began to pull meat and sides from my plate and give them to Lili while everyone else dug into theirs. The general consensus was that the food was mediocre which was the opinion of everyone in our party. However, 3 of the 4 adults at the table gave the BBQ sauce rave reviews. I was told it was spicy and I don't always do spicy well, so I chose not to try it. I have no doubt it was good though because it was the topic of conversation during the rest of the week.

After dinner we decided to walk around downtown Memphis for awhile. The highlight for Lili was all the horses lined up just waiting to pull their fancy carriages around the city. Lili was given permission to pet a couple of the horses and a bonus was the dogs that rode along with a couple of the horses.

We went into the Peabody Hotel to check it out. Wow!!!! What a hotel. I had no idea it was so big. We did get some ice cream from a little ice cream shop at the hotel though and Lili threw pennies into the fountain.

After dessert we headed back to the hotel to retire for the evening. Our vacation had begun and Day 1 was a nice start even though I had not yet managed to take any pictures. Oops! I tried to make up for it during the rest of the week.