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Day 5-7
So on Sunday we took a trip to the Jack Daniels distillery with high hopes of getting a couple of cheeky samples and perhaps a couple of bottles for presents to take back home... Only to find out Lynchburg is a dry county! (As the tour guide said, wettest dry county I've ever been in).
Despite the lack of samples, the tour was really interesting, and we were able to get a whiff of the 140% Proof whiskey (trust me you don't need much more than that!) before it is 'mellowed' and made into the JD we all know and love. On a side note, if either me or Tom ever manage to win the lottery we will become members of the JD 'Single Barrel Club' where you pay $9000-$12000 to go and carry out your own tasting of three barrels of JD, choose your favourite, then you get the entire barrel full of booze (around 250 bottles), the barrel itself, and your name on a plaque in the Single Barrel Club room!
After the tour we went to the 'square' where you could buy various JD merchandise (only ones which had actual whiskey in were $100+ collectors bottles!). We also stopped for some lunch in the Iron Kettle, very nice chicken burger with a taste of JD!
Right thats enough about the Tennessee Whiskey... We headed to Shelbyville and our hotel for the night, very old looking town with not much going on. The biggest thing around there was something to do with Walking Horses (I'm not a horse person so don't really have a clue why it was so big but I'm sure to a horse enthusiast it's very impressive!).
The next morning we headed off early for the long drive to Memphis (5 hours)... Stopped at a Sonic Drive In for lunch (probably the first really unhealthy meal so far, so we have done quite well). It was the laziest lunch ever, drive in next to a menu, pressing a button to say the order and next thing you know it's on your lap, you sit and eat it in the car, then drive round to a bin and drive out again! We also took a stop at a 'Mall' to break up the drive a bit and both brough some nice new Levis (its hard to say no when they are so cheap here in comparison to England!).
Driving through Memphis to find our hotel was not too easy, lots of one way systems and the Sat Nav telling us to turn down roads which aren't even there! Managed to figure it out in the end, settled in and then head out for some food - the hotel recommended a restaurant called 'Flight'... Very nice and I would recommend it to anyone in Memphis if they haven't already been. First of all, as with all of the other restaurants we have been in, the service is impecable. Secondly we had the nicest bottle of wine ever (went down a little too easily some may say) and then the food itself was amazing. They have things called 'Flights' where instead of one starter/main they give 3 smaller starters/mains, so you get to try a little bit of everything. What was even better were the liquor flights and dessert flights. Chocolate Cake, Creme Brulee and Cheesecake accomanied by a glass of Dissarono, some other liquor I can't remember the name of, and bailys... Heaven. Then off down Beale St. for the evening to listen to a proper Blues band in one of the coolest pubs we have ever been in! Looking forward to more of that over the next couple of days.
Today was an expensive one, started off with a trip to Urban Outfitters to get some new clothes (taxi which picked us up and took us was the most flashy taxi I have ever been in! haha) and then we went to Graceland and Sun Studio and then headed back to the hotel room to buy a chinese take away and watch MIB III. I'll leave the details on Sun Studio for Tom to explain as I think he will do it more justice than me!
- Mel
Note: To anyone else who may be wondering about how Sandy is affecting us, so far all it is doing it making it a little colder/more windy than it usually is for this time of year. Fingers crossed it doesn't get any worse than that (I'm sure it won't). Thoughts go out to anyone who has been affected worse than us, it looks awful.
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