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15-night Grand Heartland Cruise

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11-night Mississippi River Gateway Cruise

Price: Please call for rates - # of Days: 7 days

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8-night Music Cities Cruise

Price: Please call for rates - # of Days: 8 days

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11-night Mississippi Explorer Cruise

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8-night Lower Mississippi River Cruise

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Overview

Introduction

Memphis is where you go to learn about the blues, the birth of rock 'n' roll and Graceland. Ties to the past are strong and deep there—and accessible via the living music of the blues.

Memphis is a modern city of innovation, where FedEx brought overnight package delivery to the world and Kemmons Wilson perfected the roadside accommodation model when he built the first Holiday Inn there. The city's population ranks it among the 25 largest in the U.S., but there is a small-town charm in Memphis. Its history plays a role in what makes this modern city tick, from its rich music heritage to a painful civil rights past.

As always, the city welcomes visitors warmly, in the tradition of southern hospitality, and offers them good food, good music and friendly people.

Must See or Do

Sights—Graceland to spend a day in the home of Elvis Presley; the Overton Square theater district; The Peabody Memphis hotel for the daily Duck March; historic Sun Studio, where Johnny Cash, Elvis and B.B. King recorded; Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Museums—The National Civil Rights Museum; Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum; the Metal Museum; The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens; The Mississippi River Museum in Mud Island Park; The Pink Palace Museum; Stax Museum of American Soul Music; the Cotton Museum; the Blues Hall of Fame.

Memorable Meals—Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous, Central BBQ or The Bar-B-Q Shop for barbecue; Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken for crispy, home-style fried chicken; Restaurant Iris for a quirky French-Creole fusion; Flight for upscale dining; Alchemy for small plates and a see-and-be-seen crowd; Felicia Suzanne's or Chez Philippe for romantic fine dining.

Late Night—Beale Street for blues and booze; Wild Bill's Restaurant and Lounge for blues and beer; Hi-Tone Cafe for roots rock; Earnestine & Hazel's for late drinks and light fare.

Walks—Riverbluff Walkway at Tom Lee Park; Greenbelt Park on Mud Island; Memphis Botanic Garden; Dixon Gallery and Gardens; Shelby Farms Greenline; Big River Crossing over the Mississippi River for dramatic views.

Especially for Kids—The Children's Museum of Memphis; the Peabody Ducks; the Fire Museum of Memphis; the Memphis Zoo; My Big Backyard at the Memphis Botanic Garden; Main Street Trolley.

Geography

The Mississippi River forms the city's western boundary. Downtown, which holds many of the popular tourist attractions, spreads along the river (the downtown is not in the center of the city, the usual urban pattern, but along its western edge).

Interstate 240 is a handy way to demarcate several of the other geographic areas of Memphis. It roughly separates downtown from midtown (the geographic center of the city), which lies on the east side of I-240. The southern sweep of I-240 separates midtown from South Memphis, and the northern sweep of I-240/I-40 divides midtown from North Memphis. East Memphis is directly east of midtown, with Highland Street the general border between the two.

The metropolitan area includes suburbs such as Bartlett (to the northeast) and Germantown and Collierville (to the east) as well as the city of West Memphis, which is across the Mississippi River in Arkansas, and DeSoto County, Mississippi, a sprawling suburban area to the south.

History

The Chickasaw people were early residents of the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, and in 1739, Fort Assumption became the first Euro-American outpost in the area. The town prospered in the first half of the 1800s, becoming an important inland port and cotton market.

The good times ended with the Civil War, and the ensuing years were marked by yellow-fever epidemics and economic depression. The city remained the hub of the surrounding cotton country, however, and by the early 1900s the nightclubs along Beale Street were renowned for good times and the blues music that had been born on the plantations.

Not surprisingly, when the blues mingled with country and gospel music to make rock 'n' roll, Memphis was one of the places where the fusion took place. Elvis Presley was living with his family in a Memphis housing project in 1954. Less than three years later, he was the city's most famous resident and owner of the Graceland estate, now the second-most-visited house in the U.S., after the White House.

The city's slide into harder times began in the late 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at Memphis' Lorraine Motel in 1968. At about the same time, large numbers of residents and businesses began moving to the city's eastern edge—or out of Memphis altogether—pushed along by urban problems and racial strife.

The city center continued to experience problems through much of the 1990s but then entered a renaissance, with a gorgeous baseball park, plenty of restaurants and a thriving arts district on South Main Street. And FedExForum, the arena for the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies and University of Memphis basketball teams, opened next to Beale Street in 2004.

All eyes are now on the downtown riverfront, as developers, politicians, descendants of the city's founding fathers and others debate how best to continue developing the area. Beale Street Landing opened in 2014, and today it serves as the home for cruise ships that ply up and down the Mississippi River.

Downtown Memphis now is a popular residential, business, restaurant and entertainment district with action throughout the day and night. Midtown is exploding with the rebirth of Overton Square, the fantastic dining scene in Cooper-Young, and the growing Broad Avenue Arts District.

Potpourri

With more than 800 songs referencing the city, from "Proud Mary" to U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)," Memphis is the most sung-about city in modern music, according to data from the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum.

Ducks Unlimited, the nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation and restoration of America's wetlands and waterfowl population, has its national headquarters at Shelby Farms in East Memphis.

Memphis is considered the pork barbecue capital of the world, thanks to more than 100 barbecue specialty restaurants and the annual Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

Memphis is sixth in the nation for the number of properties on the National Register of Historic Places; there are more listings per capita in Memphis than in any other American city.

Author John Grisham, who practiced law in the Mississippi suburb of Southaven before becoming a bestselling author, set many of his books in Memphis.

The movie Hustle & Flow was set and filmed in Memphis. The soundtrack of "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp," by local hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, won an Oscar for best song in the movie Hustle and Flow.

Pop singer and actor Justin Timberlake was born and raised in Millington, a middle-class suburb in North Memphis. In 2007, he launched Tennman Records, a joint venture with Interscope Records, and he is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. Timberlake is a regular visitor to Memphis, sometimes sitting courtside at Grizz games. He was honored in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015.