For some time, I've been curious about Louisville. I've heard things here and there and my most recent issue of Washingtonian featured it as well. I'm sure that years ago I never would've thought I'd visit Louisville, much less greater Kentucky but I'm so glad I put those prejudices and preconceived notions aside. There's a lot of beauty in the Kentucky countryside and Louisville is a very eclectic city. There are rougher-looking spots here and there and in fact, they're sometimes right up against nicer areas but we didn't feel unsafe at any point during our visit. There's a lot of great food, history, murals, quirky attractions, and (too many) hipsters. We noticed a lot of growth while there so we're thinking it's just going to get bigger and better and more culturally interesting.
Our travel itinerary (Friday, May 27, 2016 - Sunday, May 29, 2016)
Friday, May 27
The drive from Lexington to Louisville is roughly an hour so not long at all. As a result, we decided to make a quick stop in the "Most Beautiful Small Town in America",
Bardstown. They're not kidding when they call it a small town. It has one main street that consists of maybe two blocks.
Needless to say, we weren't there very long but we did stay long enough to buy some delicious cookies from the Farmer's Market and then some "yum-yums", their wording, from
Hadorn's Bakery.
From there we proceeded to Louisville! We parked our car in front of
Dupont Mansion Bed & Breakfast. It was too early to check in so we walked around, got some cash, and then waited at the Visitor Center for an hour-long tour of
Historic Old Louisville. Incidentally, there's another Historic Old Louisville walking tour offered by a tour guide who was formerly affiliated with the Visitor Center. Bad blood, perhaps? We almost took his tour but came upon a sign for the Visitor Center's tour and sought them out. We paid half the price and got twice as much out of it because the cost included the walking tour AND entrance into the
Conrad-Caldwell House Museum.
While waiting for the tour we hung out in
Central Park. Yeah, you read that right. The park was designed by none other than Frederick Olmsted, the same designer of the iconic Central Park in NYC. Louisville's Central Park is way more modest at about a square block. I'm sad that we missed the
Kentucky Shakespeare Festival that runs from June to August. I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare but it would've been cool to see a live performance while in lawn chairs amongst nature.
We took an intimate (there were only three of us) walking tour with Emma. I had no idea the treasure trove of historic mansions in Louisville. Such amazing craftsmanship. The guy on our tour kept checking Zillow for house prices and on average they were a reasonable $300K. Emma explained, however, that it generally takes about $600K to refurbish one of those homes. Yikes!
Some of the highlights:
I think they call this the Pink Castle:
This house was my favorite:
Last, but not least, this is
St. James Court, which runs through Historic Old Louisville. It's part of the remains of the
Southern Exposition of 1883. The motivation behind the exposition, same concept as a world's fair, was to attract visitors and highlight the latest inventions of the day. We got a cross-history lesson about the exposition from both Emma and our tour guide at the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum. Almost one million people came to the exposition the first year (it ran for five consecutive summers). It was quite a marvel at the time because it was electrically lit at night.
After our delightful stroll we made our way to the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum and took a 75-minute tour with Margaret, the great grand-daughter of the home's second namesake, William E. Caldwell. Taking a tour with an ancestor of the home's previous owners was really special. How many people can say they got to do something like that? Many of the home's features are augmented by the same furniture, decor, and art that adorned it in its heyday.
Remember the Southern Exposition of 1883? Margaret thinks it was that same event that attracted her great-grandfather to the Louisville area. Theophile Conrad was the original owner and builder of the house. His wealth came from a tanning business and from that spawned many other different businesses. Margaret's great-grandfather Caldwell derived his wealth from Caldwell Tanks.
There's some really remarkable detail work in the house. Margaret says that German carpenters did stuff like this:
By the end of our two tours it was late afternoon so we thought it would be a good time to check into our room. Like the many beautiful mansions we walked by, our B&B was bought and subsequently, refurbished. The Dupont Mansion is a beautiful home. I wish I had given it a more thorough exploration but we basically used it as a crash pad. We had the biggest and nicest suite in the house because it was a last minute booking (I know, so unlike me) and it was the only available room.
Everything was nice and spacious though we could tell the updates were done in the 1990s. It might be time for another facelift. My biggest beef with the room/B&B was that light streamed in from the street and closing the blinds didn't help. They had decorative curtains up that couldn't close because of strategically placed nails. What's the point of non-functional curtains? So annoying. Additionally, the first night we were in town we learned that Louisville is a UPS hub. Their planes land something like every ten minutes. I heard them that entire first night. I slept miserably. Fortunately, we didn't hear the planes our last two nights. When we mentioned it to the B&B owner he explained that sometimes they have to change their flight path due to the wind. I was thankful for whatever direction the wind was blowing when I wasn't hearing planes!
Almost immediately after dropping our stuff off in our room we headed out to dinner at
Mayan Cafe. I thought it was a marvelous meal. We sat outside in the warm evening sun and split two orders of chips and guacamole. Evan got a pork-based dish and I got wild red snapper. It tasted so fresh and good. Evan's complaint was that it was a little more formal than he was expecting. When you picture a typical Mexican joint you probably think of some casual and low-cost but as I explained, it's not Mexican, it's Mayan. It was a little pricey for dinner but I know that they offer lower-cost options for lunch. I'd definitely go again.
We took a quick post-dinner stroll down the street and spied a giant mint julep sculpture and
goodwood brewery.
Then we parked downtown and explored for a bit.
One of our stops was
21c Museum Hotel. We almost stayed there. In fact, up until six days before we departed on our road trip, we had a room reserved. A couple of emails leading up to our trip really turned me off. First of all, there's no complimentary parking. WHAT? You're telling me that the most expensive and nicest hotel in the city can't buy or build their own parking garage for their guests? Our options were to park in a city garage for $7 a day OR pay the hotel $27 a day for valet service. What a steal, am I right? On top of that, in very fine print they said it was their policy to charge their guests $100 a day for incidentals upfront. NO. I don't pay for hypotheticals. So once I found that I could secure a room at the Dupont Mansion I promptly cancelled our reservations with 21c.
Despite all that, we still wanted to see what it was about. The concept is awesome. It's a boutique hotel and there's art displayed all over the lobby, in the elevators, and even in the rooms (which we didn't get to see in person). I might be open to staying there in the future but the clientele is definitely upper crust and a little stuffy. We'd probably stick out.
A replica of Michelangelo's David out front:
There was an awesome exhibit in the lobby of religious buildings sculpted out of guns and ammunition. I really liked the juxtaposition of a place that's meant to be a peaceful sanctuary made with the tools of destruction and violence. Really breathtaking and thought-provoking.
Other artwork:
We saw some cool street art as well. I love when cities have themed sculptures. In Louisville, there are painted horses all over the city. I didn't get pictures of all of them (darn!) but I sure enjoyed seeing them. There's also some kind of campaign going on to bring attention to Louisville-native celebrities. We saw many displayed like Jennifer Lawrence, Diane Sawyer, and Muhammad Ali.
Some other street art and quirky attractions, including the Louisville Slugger, the biggest baseball bat in the world, and the biggest vampire bat in the world:
We capped off the evening on
Bardstown Road. It's a hopping scene. It reminded me of Carytown in Richmond but it was a little seedier, I think. We went specifically for ice cream that Emma recommended at
Comfy Cow. I wasn't overly impressed with the ice cream or the service so I didn't get anything that night. Evan got a great milkshake. We went another night and Evan had good luck again but I got a sundae that was hot fudge with a side of ice cream. In other words, it was way too chocolatey. I had to take it back and get a new one. I wasn't impressed even after I got my replacement.
Saturday, May 28
I had a whole bunch of things planned for today but I sort of threw them out the window. Jimmy, our Buffalo Trace tour guide in Lexington, mentioned Mammoth Cave randomly and then I found out it wasn't too far (1.5 hours) from Louisville. I wasn't sure if we were ever going to be in Kentucky again and decided it was worth it to seize the moment and go. I love checking off National Parks and especially so this year because it's National Park Service's Centennial.
About 15 minutes outside Mammoth Cave National Park we saw this guy:
I knew right away that kitsch heaven was calling me so we made a mental note to check out
Dinosaur World on the way out.
As you might imagine, being that it was a Saturday and compounded by the fact that it was a holiday weekend, Mammoth Cave was packed. Since this was an impromptu visit we didn't think to reserve a spot on one of the cave tours. Consequently, we did the self-guided tour, which was kind of disappointing. You really don't get to see much. We definitely cheated ourselves but hey, at least we got to go, right? Honestly, I'm not sure I could've taken one of the tours anyway. They're two hours long and I get a little claustrophobic when I'm stuck underground.
Mammoth Cave is over 400 miles and it's the largest cave in the world. Pretty impressive! It was mined during the War of 1812 for gun powder. There's also evidence of Native American use from thousands of years ago. There are names carved into the cave walls from modern-day explorers (see below). A series of people exploited Mammoth Cave for their financial gain, each claiming and showing sections of it. Finally, all were pulled under the umbrella of Mammoth Cave and turned into a national park.
The lush mouth of the Cave:
After that we braved the steaminess (it was really hot and humid while we were in Kentucky) and went to Dinosaur World! I was only mildly embarrassed that we were the only childfree adults in attendance.
I was pleasantly surprised that in conjunction with the life-size dinosaur sculptures, they include fact-laden plaques for a learning experience, too. In other words, it's silly, but it's also educational.
From there we returned to Louisville in the late afternoon but just in time to pay a visit to Joe Ley's Antiques. It's just a couple of blocks from Mayan Cafe but it was closed by the time we got to it the day before. It's three floors of the most random junk (I say that fondly) and treasures you could find. I actually did see something I like but I wasn't willing to spend the money. Oh well. It was fun to explore.
A cool mural we saw around the corner:
We had dinner at
Lydia's Place, a hipster dive. Everything we ate was great in theory and looked delicious but we were disappointed. The best part had to be the gouda mac-n-cheese that we split. My kimchi melt with pork belly was too big and greasy, and two-thirds of my meat was fat. Evan said his chicken was a little stringy.
We both got a kick out of this:
I do meticulous research prior to our trips and so, like with any other trip, I checked all of the major entertainment venues to see if there was anything we might be interested in seeing. Nothing came up except Anything Goes. The tickets were somewhere around $18.50. That's a steal for a stage production. I knew if this was the Kennedy Center we'd be paying upwards of $60+ a person, more likely, $100+ a person. I immediately seized the opportunity not using my deductive reasoning to figure out a) why the tickets were so inexpensive and b) why the tickets were general admission. That should've been the tip off. I just figured they did things differently.
Fast forward to that evening, as soon as we got to the theater, which was the size of our condo, not a professionally-sized venue, and I saw the fold-up chairs and makeshift stage props, I knew I had made a grave mistake. Evan and I made it through the first half of the show but we were both on the same page that we wanted to make a quick getaway at the intermission. Even that was awkward! An usher who had sat near us essentially followed us out and then when I walked in the direction of the men's bathroom with Evan, assuming that the exit would be nearby, he tried to direct me to the ladies' bathroom. Uh...thanks for assuming I needed your help? Evan had the unenviable task of asking for the exit so we could "get something from the car". Then we had to stand and wait for the elevator while the usher and everyone around us watched. I think they were on to us. Haha.
Evan and I both agreed that it was so bad that we didn't even want to talk about it. We felt it would be too cruel to express our true thoughts since we knew the cast was trying their best. It just wasn't a polished, professional troupe. That's all there is to it. We had certain expectations and what we saw was amateur hour.
Sunday, May 29
We started off our day in such a cool way. We walked two miles round-trip from Kentucky to Indiana!!! We parked at the Big Four Bridge on the Louisville side and then walked over to Jeffersonville, IN. Evan reminded me that we've crossed a bridge before to get from one country to the other - the Oresund Bridge from Copenhagen, Denmark to Malmo, Sweden - but that was via train and doing it on foot from one state to the other was neater!
I should mention that it's called the Big Four Bridge after the Big Four Railroad, which serviced Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis. The Big Four Bridge used to have rail tracks but was converted into the pedestrian bridge it is today.
It was a sweltering but beautiful day:
There's a frozen yogurt place on the Indiana side pretty much as soon as you get off the bridge. That's strong business acumen. We didn't do any exploring on the Indiana side because we had other plans in Louisville but I don't think we missed much. I almost forgot (Evan reminded me) that classical music was being piped in at the midpoint of the bridge.
From there we drove down
Frankfort Avenue, a wonderful street with many boutiques and restaurants, to reach a brandy distillery,
Copper & Kings.
We passed this beautiful house facade at the entrance of Frankfort Avenue. The home was taken down in another part of the city but the facade was preserved (good thinking) and relocated.
We spent the next 1-1.5 hours in Butchertown. That's where they used to butcher meat, sort of self-explanatory. I knew Evan and I were not going to do the entire Bourbon Trail because we're not bourbon drinkers and I'm a lightweight. I came across Copper & Kings, a brandy, gin, and absinthe distillery and knew we had to pay a visit. Evan loves absinthe so this was a special treat for him.
Before my eyes glazed over with the details of distilling brandy, I was pretty intrigued by some of the environmentally-friendly practices of Copper & Kings. It actually reminded me a little of New Belgium in Fort Collins, CO. They have butterfly gardens/refuges in the front that are protected and checked on by the appropriate authorities.
They also repurposed the wood from the warehouse they tore down to design their distillery and make tables.
One of the factoids I retained from our tour was that they blast music in the basement of the building where the barrels are aging. The waves from the music move the alcohol around. What? How neat is that?
Copper & Kings is also really cool because they're very inclusive with their community. They host parties on every major holiday and probably lesser-known ones, too. While we were there they were set up for a wedding and reception.
Getting samples:
On our way out, Evan bought a package of three sample bottles of absinthe. We also asked the guy for a lunch recommendation and based on that, went back to Frankfort Avenue for
Joella's Hot Chicken. We went into it knowing that nothing could compare to
Rocky's Hot Chicken Shack in
Asheville, NC but you know what? Joella's turned out to be pretty good competition. Rocky's still has the edge but we liked it. Neither of us went for the "hot" chicken and played it safe.
Evan's always been wary of the chicken & waffles trend but after Joella's he's decided that he's a fan!
We ended the day at the
Muhammad Ali Center. Right next to it was a multi-day Beatlemania event. It was actually pretty neat even if the performers weren't the real thing.
We were pretty wiped by the time we went into the Muhammad Ali Center but we both enjoyed the exhibit. I didn't know a lot about him prior to our visit but it's obvious he was a symbol of hope and strength to people, especially, the African-American community. He stood up for what he believed in despite societal norms and in fact, stood up to and challenged the societal norm of prejudice at the time. He dumped his slave name and adopted Islam as his religion because his experience with the church was segregation. You have to have a strong sense of self to say you won't go to war and then deal with the consequences, which were many. He had his heavyweight title stripped, his boxing license taken away, and faced a lot of public scrutiny. He's also a U.N. messenger of peace and a symbol of triumph over tribulation to people all over the world.
Edited to add on Saturday, June 4, 2016: I cannot believe how the timing of our visit (unbeknownst to us) coincided with Muhammad Ali's deterioration in health. Not even a week after we walked through his center he passed away. How sad. I know this loss will reverberate around the globe.
By the time we were done it was late afternoon and we were full from a big lunch and worn out from the heat and crowds. This is where our trip effectively ended because we chilled out at the B&B the rest of the evening except for a quick trip to fill up the gas tank.
We had such a great time in Louisville. We'd definitely go back. We skipped a few museums I had on my list like the Louisville Slugger Museum because once we got there we figured it was more kid-centric. We also skipped the Kentucky Derby Museum because the Muhammad Ali Center took precedence and we ran out of time due to our day-trip to Mammoth Cave. Despite not endorsing horse racing, I was curious to find out about the origins of the Kentucky Derby and why Kentucky turned into horse country. Maybe next visit. I see a lot of promise and growth in Louisville. I'd say it's a city on the rise.
