Memphis in May

Every year, there is a huge festival in Memphis called "Memphis in May." We have a music fest the first week in May, a BBQ contest, a sunset river symphony, art exhibits, and much more. We honor a different country each year. This year it was Belgium. It rains at music fest EVERY year and this year was no exception. As a matter of fact, this year, it started raining towards the end of music fest and DIDN'T stop. It flooded Memphis so that they had to move the BBQ contest to a different part of town. These photos are of Tom Lee Park on Riverside Drive, the area where they originally planned to have the festival.

This is one of the parking lots at Tom Lee Park.

My dad took the top photo, I suppose he found a kind bystander to take the second photo (since he's in it, wearing his bicycling gear). You can view more of his incredibly beautiful photos here.

This year, we went to the Memphis in May gala called "Diamonds & Lace." Here are some of the photos from that evening.

This is our table and a copy of the menu. The food was excellent!

Here we are.

Another of the beautifully decorated tables. And check out the scroll work on the walls. This event was held at the historic Peabody hotel in downtown Memphis.

Another photo of the tables. In this one, you can see one of the grand chandeliers.

We had a lot of fun dancing to a live blues band and we got to hear our Mayor A.C. Wharton speak. We even went up and met him afterwards. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him talk. He's a very down-to-earth and intelligent man. When I met him, I told him that I had voted for him and how I was glad that I did. Hearing something about someone is one thing, but meeting them in person, you can decide for yourself. I believe I'll be voting for him again this year.

Here is the Belgian flag:

We got to listen to this beautiful Belgian trio, Lais:

I was not aware of this, but the primary Belgian language is French. Since my husband speaks French, he was great at this event!

This weekend, we made it to BBQ fest on Friday night. We went later than I expected, so we didn't get to see everything and I didn't get the photos I would have liked to get, but here are a couple.

There are hundreds of booths. They have a contest for the best BBQ and a contest for the best booth. Pretty incredible creativity and ingenuity goes into building these.

That's all for Memphis in May so far. I'm kind of hoping that we make it to Sunset Symphony again this year, but since the riverside is flooded out, I'm not sure how that's gonna work. They usually have a great band and an incredible air show. We'll see what happens!

Over and out for now. Stay tuned for posts about some new stores I visited (home decorating stores), some photos of artwork I'm doing, and links to great websites I found this week.