Graceland

So we've got our van now, and I'm still waiting for my heart rate to come down from the harrowing journey across the city. We decided to take only surface streets from pleasant tropical suburbia to downtown because the freeway just seemed too intimidating, a decision which, in retrospect, may have been poorly conceived. The first five minutes were sheer joy. Our van comes complete with Paul Simon tape, which incidentally is the single most perfect soundtrack one could ask for while careening dangerously through roundabouts and accidentally turning your windshield wipers on when trying to turn left. The weather was perfect, the directions seemed clear, and Molly only missed third gear a couple of times. A combination of extensive construction and an absolutely terrible map I took from a third-tier car rental company, however, led to many u-turns, parking lot surveys, and taking of the round about all the way round. Eventually (and it took that whole goddamn tape and then some) we made it back to where we'd stored our stuff and we could breathe deeply into paper bags.