New Year's Eve

The Peabody Hotel, one of the fancier if not fanciest hotel in Memphis, has a great and very cute tradition, The Peabody Ducks, that has been ongoing since the 1930s. The hotel has 5 american mallards, 4 female and a male. Two ceremonies are held daily - one at 11am and the other at 5pm. The first to bring the ducks from their duck palace across the roof to the elevator, down to the ground floor lobby and along the red carpet to the fountain where they pass the day away. At 5pm the ceremony is performed in reverse.
We arrived at the hotel not long before 11 to find that we weren’ the only ones to decide to see the ducks today and thus we had no chance of finding a vantage point to watch the duck parade. We decided that with to morrow being New Year’s Day we would probably have a better chance of seeing them -the crowds would either be hung over or gone.
With that decision made we returned to Main Street for lunch then returned to the hotel to prepare for the evening.
Beale Street was the centre of Memphis’ New Year celebrations with stages erected at either end and the length of the street closed to traffic. With the outside temperature -13C with a feels like of -17 C we decided to get into a bar that had live music. Our choice was Rum Boogie Cafe. The band Free World was excellent. All the musicians were accomplished and talented at their chosen instruments and we had a great night.
The walk back was very, very cold.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!Read more