Deep South: Nashville, Memphis, the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans

1. Day 1: Arrive in Nashville

   Nashville International Airport (BNA) to your hotel downtown, then Lower Broadway

   • Drive about 15 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Nashville
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Nashville International Airport (BNA), about 15 km east of downtown, where a driver meets you in arrivals for the short ride to the hotel. Plan to land by about 3 pm so you have time to settle in before the group meets at 5:30 pm; late arrivals are met and brought to dinner. Your See Sight Tours guide runs through the week ahead: the drives, the museum days, the evenings with live music and what the Delta heat is like. Then we sit down together to a welcome dinner downtown. Afterwards the guide walks the group down Lower Broadway, where the honky-tonks keep a band on stage from late morning until well after midnight, usually with no cover charge. Step into two or three, hear a few songs in each and find the room you like best. The hotel is a few blocks away, so anyone who wants an early night after the flight can slip off whenever they choose.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Nashville International Airport (BNA)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Welcome dinner
   • An evening walk down Lower Broadway and its honky-tonks with your guide

   Free time: Free until the 5:30 pm meeting

   Activity: Plan to land by about 3 pm.

2. Day 2: The Hall of Fame, Studio B and the Opry

   Downtown Nashville to RCA Studio B on Music Row, then the Grand Ole Opry House

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Nashville
   Day 2 details

   We are at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum when it opens at 9 am, ahead of the school groups. The galleries run from fiddle tunes and the first recordings to the present day, with stage costumes, handwritten lyrics and Elvis's gold Cadillac. From the museum a shuttle takes us to RCA Studio B on Music Row, where Elvis, Dolly Parton, the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison recorded in the 1950s and 1960s, and a studio guide plays the takes in the room where they were cut. Lunch is your choice downtown and the afternoon is free. Your ticket for the Ryman Auditorium is in your pocket: the 1892 tabernacle was home to the Opry from 1943 to 1974, and you can walk through it at your own pace. In the evening we drive about 20 minutes east to the Grand Ole Opry House for the show, where several artists each play a short set, as the radio broadcast has done since 1925.

   Included

   • Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum from opening
   • RCA Studio B tour on Music Row
   • Ryman Auditorium self-guided tour, at your own time
   • The Grand Ole Opry, with transfers both ways

   Optional experiences

   • Johnny Cash Museum
   • National Museum of African American Music

   Free time: Afternoon free in Nashville

   Activity: About 2 to 3 hours on your feet in the museum and studio, then a seated evening.

3. Day 3: West to Memphis and the Lorraine Motel

   Nashville to Memphis on Interstate 40, then the National Civil Rights Museum and Beale Street

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Memphis
   Day 3 details

   We leave Nashville at about 8:30 am and drive about 340 km west on Interstate 40, across the Tennessee River and the flat farm country of West Tennessee, with a coffee stop on the way. By noon we are in Memphis, where lunch is a plate of pulled pork or ribs at a barbecue place downtown. In the early afternoon we walk into the National Civil Rights Museum, built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony outside Room 306 on 4 April 1968. The exhibits run from slavery and the Montgomery bus boycott through the sit-ins and Freedom Rides to the sanitation workers' strike that brought King to Memphis, and across the street the Legacy Building follows the investigation of his killing. Allow about three hours; your guide starts with you and then leaves you to your own pace. After check-in and a rest we go down to Beale Street together for a blues set in one of its clubs, cover charge included. Dinner is your choice.

   Included

   • Drive from Nashville to Memphis with your guide
   • Barbecue lunch in Memphis
   • National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, with the Legacy Building
   • A blues set on Beale Street with your guide, cover charge included

   Free time: Dinner free on Beale Street or near the hotel

   Activity: About three hours standing and walking in the museum, with benches along the way.

   

4. Day 4: Graceland and Sun Studio

   Memphis to Graceland in Whitehaven, then Sun Studio on Union Avenue

   • Drive about 45 min
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Memphis
   Day 4 details

   Graceland opens at 9 am and we take the first entry slot, so the mansion is quieter than it will be by late morning. Elvis bought the house in 1957, at 22, and the rooms are kept as they were in the 1970s: the white living room with its peacock stained glass, the wood-panelled kitchen, the Jungle Room with its green shag carpet. The tour ends in the Meditation Garden, where Elvis and his parents are buried. Across the road the Elvis Presley's Memphis complex holds his cars, his stage costumes and his two private jets; give it an hour or two before a light lunch on site. In the afternoon we drive back towards downtown to Sun Studio, where Sam Phillips recorded "Rocket 88" in 1951 and Elvis made his first records in 1953 and 1954. The guided tour ends in the small studio room itself, which still works as a recording studio. The rest of the afternoon and the evening are free: the Peabody ducks march out of the lobby fountain at 5 pm.

   Included

   • Graceland mansion tour at the first entry of the day, with the Meditation Garden
   • Elvis Presley's Memphis: the cars, costumes and jets
   • Sun Studio guided tour

   Optional experiences

   • Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum

   Easier option: Skip the Elvis Presley's Memphis complex and go back to the hotel after the mansion tour for a rest before Sun Studio.

   More active option: In the late afternoon, walk the Big River Crossing, a path on the Harahan Bridge, across the Mississippi into Arkansas and back.

   Free time: Late afternoon and evening free

   Activity: About 3 hours on foot at Graceland and an hour at Sun Studio.

   

5. Day 5: Stax, then Highway 61 to Clarksdale

   Memphis to the Stax Museum, then south on US 61 to Clarksdale, Mississippi

   • Drive about 2 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Clarksdale
   Day 5 details

   A slower morning, then the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in South Memphis, rebuilt on the site of the old cinema where Stax Records cut hits for Otis Redding, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, Sam and Dave and Isaac Hayes, whose gold-trimmed Cadillac stands on the floor. Late morning we take US 61 south out of Memphis into Mississippi, about an hour and a half across the flat Delta, with cotton and soybean fields running to the tree line. Lunch is in Clarksdale, then we spend the afternoon at the Delta Blues Museum in the old freight depot, where the cabin Muddy Waters lived in on Stovall Plantation has been rebuilt inside. Your guide shows you the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, tied in legend to Robert Johnson, and the Riverside Hotel, which was the hospital where Bessie Smith died in 1937. The late afternoon is free. Our departures are timed so this is a Friday or another night when Clarksdale's clubs and juke joints have live blues, and we go together, cover charge included.

   Included

   • Stax Museum of American Soul Music
   • Drive down US 61 into the Mississippi Delta with your guide
   • Lunch in Clarksdale
   • Delta Blues Museum
   • The crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 and the Riverside Hotel
   • An evening of live blues in a Clarksdale club, cover charge included

   Free time: Late afternoon free in Clarksdale

   Activity: Easy walking in a small town; the clubs are hot and loud, and you can leave whenever you like.

   

6. Day 6: Dockery, Indianola and down to Natchez

   Clarksdale to Dockery Farms and Indianola, then south on US 61 through Vicksburg to Natchez

   • Drive about 5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Natchez
   Day 6 details

   This is the longest drive of the trip, about 400 km and four and three-quarter hours at the wheel, the one day over our four-hour limit. The Delta stops lie on the road south, and the alternative is six hours straight from Memphis, so we split it into four legs, none over about two hours. We leave Clarksdale at 8 am for Dockery Farms near Cleveland, the cotton plantation where Charley Patton lived and played and where many place the start of the Delta blues; the gin, the seed house and the old filling station still stand. On to Indianola and the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, built around the brick cotton gin where King worked as a young man; he is buried in its garden. Lunch is in Indianola. In the afternoon we follow US 61 south, with a break on the Vicksburg riverfront, where a long floodwall of painted murals faces the Mississippi, and reach Natchez by about 5:30 pm. The town stands on a bluff high above the river, and we walk to its edge for the evening light before a Southern dinner together.

   Included

   • Dockery Farms with your guide
   • B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola
   • Lunch in Indianola
   • A break on the Vicksburg riverfront
   • Evening on the bluff in Natchez
   • Southern dinner in Natchez

   Easier option: Stay in the vehicle or in the shade at Dockery, a short stop on open ground, and rest in the vehicle on the long afternoon leg.

   Activity: Mostly a day on the road with short walks; the drive is split into legs of about 45 minutes, 35 minutes, 2 hours and 1.5 hours.

   

7. Day 7: Natchez to New Orleans by way of the Whitney

   Natchez to St. Francisville, then the Whitney Plantation on the River Road, then New Orleans

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in New Orleans
   Day 7 details

   Natchez in the morning: your guide walks the bluff and the old streets of downtown, then takes us to Forks of the Road, the site of one of the largest slave markets in the Deep South and now part of Natchez National Historical Park, and, where it is open, to the William Johnson House, home of a free Black barber whose diary records life in the town from 1835 to 1851; when it is closed, your guide tells his story outside it. We leave at about 10:45 am and follow US 61 south into Louisiana, with lunch in St. Francisville, an old river town of live oaks and churches. Mid-afternoon we reach the Whitney Plantation on the River Road, a museum that tells the plantation's history through the lives of the people enslaved there, with memorial walls carrying their names. It is about an hour from there to New Orleans, where we check in by about 5:30 pm. The evening is free: your guide will point you to Frenchmen Street, where the clubs have live jazz most nights.

   Included

   • Morning walk in Natchez with your guide: the bluff, Forks of the Road and the William Johnson House (where open)
   • Lunch in St. Francisville
   • Whitney Plantation
   • Drive to New Orleans with your guide

   Free time: Evening free in New Orleans

   Activity: About 2 hours on foot at the Whitney, outdoors on paths; bring a hat and water. If the William Johnson House is closed, we spend the time on the bluff and in the old town; if the Whitney cannot take the group on the day, we stay longer in Natchez and reach New Orleans earlier.

8. Day 8: The French Quarter, a Creole lunch and Preservation Hall

   A day on foot in the French Quarter and Tremé, with the streetcar for the afternoon

   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in New Orleans
   Day 8 details

   We start at 8:30 am, before the heat and the crowds, on a walk through the French Quarter with a local guide: Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo, where the Louisiana Purchase was formally handed over in 1803, then the balconied streets, the French Market and beignets at a café along the way. The walk ends in Louis Armstrong Park at Congo Square, where enslaved and free people of colour gathered on Sundays to play music and dance, a tradition many trace to the roots of jazz. Late morning we cook our own lunch at a Creole cooking class, making and eating gumbo, jambalaya and pralines. The afternoon is free, with a streetcar pass for the St. Charles line out to the Garden District and Magazine Street, or time for the National WWII Museum. In the evening we share a farewell dinner, then a concert at Preservation Hall, the small room on St. Peter Street where traditional jazz has been played since 1961.

   Included

   • French Quarter walk with a local guide: Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo, the French Market and Congo Square
   • Creole cooking class with lunch
   • A streetcar pass for the afternoon
   • Farewell dinner
   • Preservation Hall concert

   Optional experiences

   • National WWII Museum
   • Steamboat cruise on the Mississippi
   • Swamp tour

   Easier option: Stop after Jackson Square and sit with a coffee at a café on the square; your guide comes back for you before the cooking class, or a taxi takes you to the hotel to rest until then.

   More active option: In the free afternoon, ride a rental bike along the Lafitte Greenway from Armstrong Park through Tremé to Mid-City and back.

   Free time: Afternoon free

   Activity: About 3 km on foot in the morning, on flat pavements.

   

9. Day 9: New Orleans and home

   French Quarter to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Breakfast
   Day 9 details

   The morning is yours for a last walk along the Mississippi riverfront, café au lait and beignets, or the National WWII Museum, which opens at 9 am. Check out by late morning, and our driver takes you to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), about 25 km west of the French Quarter and a 30 to 40 minute drive depending on traffic. Your guide sees the group to departures and checks your flight before saying goodbye. Book a flight leaving after about 1 pm. If yours leaves earlier, we arrange the transfer at the time you need and you skip the free morning. If you would like to stay on in New Orleans for the music, the food or a swamp trip, we can book extra nights at the same hotel and move your airport transfer to the day you fly.

   Included

   • Drop-off at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)

   Optional experiences

   • Extra nights in New Orleans, booked on request

   Free time: Morning free

   Activity: Book a flight leaving after about 1 pm.

Wildlife and weather: Spring and autumn bring warm days that suit walking in Memphis and the French Quarter; from June to September it is hot and humid, so we walk early and spend the middle of the day indoors, and autumn departures carry a hurricane-season weather plan.

• Nashville2 nights
• Memphis2 nights
• Clarksdale1 night
• Natchez1 night
• New Orleans2 nights