Going to Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee

Finally we made it to Graceland, Wahid wanted to go for ages. We knew that it was a commercial event, but it was nice to have a peek inside the house where he lived. I was actually surprised that the house was not even that big. It is big enough, but for someone who had that kind of wealth I expected it to be much bigger. Some of the rooms are not attached to the mansion.

The living room

Elvis bought the mansion when he was only 22 years old and he kept on living there until he died in 1977. It thought that some of the house was pretty stylish, even for this time and age. I loved the dining room & the living room. We were not allowed to go upstairs, Elvis never just to allowed anyone going to the upstairs floor. He died upstairs, just above the entrance hall. The kitchen looked very dated, but for those days it must have been state of the art. In the basement he had several rooms. One of them was the TV room, all in yellow and blue. I thought it was rather nicely done.

The TV room in yellow & blue

The pool room is covered from top to bottom in fabric, even the ceiling was covered in material. I liked it a lot, all though it was not that big either. After the jungle room we went to an area were there were clothes from his wedding and other private artifacts. After that we went outside and had a look in one of the adjacent buildings. One of the corridors is filled with golden records & award, it is pretty amazing to see how many he received in his lifetime. But later we would even more.

There was an area that was dedicated to his movie career. There were lots of billboards & movie costumes. One of the last areas we went to was were Elvis played the piano in the morning with friends on the day of his death. The last room was dedicated to more of his golden records and costumes of his Hawaiian tour. The walls are so high and the records were hanging all the way to the top. I have to say it was pretty impressive.

The last stop was in the garden, Elvis had a meditation garden were he would sit and sometimes read. Now there is his grave and the graves of his mother & father. He and his mother were burried in another cemetery, but after threats that someone wanted to take the body, the bodies were moved back to Graceland. His grandmother outlived them all and her grave is also there, she died in 1980 at the respectable age of 86. There is also a marker for Elvis's twin brother who died at childbirth, his grave site is still in Tupelo, were they were was born.

For some reason I felt sad after the visit, it just feels to me that a lot of people are trying to make a buck after his death.