After a year and a half of short car trips only, it seems best to test the waters of post-Covid air travel gradually. For me, a non-stop one-and-a-half-hour flight to Louisville, Kentucky was it. Why Louisville, everyone I told about my trip asked. Why indeed? Apart from the relative proximity, Kentucky was one of only three states I had never visited and, I admit, I was a little curious about the people who keep electing the same turtle-looking senator term after term after term. Louisville turned out to be an excellent choice. The weather was perfect, and the city had a lot to offer, but...
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| Louisville is home to world-renowned Kentucky Derby Horse Race |
... if you are inclined to spend less than a week in Louisville, make sure you visit between Thursday and Sunday. The city sleeps the rest of the week, which means most of the museums, shops and cafes are closed, there are no tours and the streets are generally deserted. It is hard to tell whether the pandemic has something to do with it, or the Kentuckians take seriously the finding that working too much is a health hazard.
Barge on the Ohio River
Cruises on the Ohio River run only on Saturdays, the Visitor Center and the Speed Art Museum work Wednesday through Saturday, and a top historical attraction, the Conrad-Caldwell House Museum, opens only on weekends.
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| Conrad-Caldwell House Museum in Old Louisville |
Louisville is the only city I have visited that does not have hop-on-hop-off tours. The closest thing is the City Taste Tour, run by a local entrepreneur, and sold out weeks in advance. Another company that offers tours is Trolley De'Ville, but it seems to specialize in catering to groups. I have not seen any individual tickets for sale online and no one answered the phone. I did find out that you can book a trolley tour for $414 for an undetermined number of people. The most popular bourbon distillery tours can cost over $1,000 and the cheaper ones are impossible to get into. If they are available, that information is hard to find online. And any information about Louisville online is unreliable.
For example, a free circular bus Lou and Lift offers the following information:
"The 4th Street bus travels 4th Street, from Churchill Downs to the Galt House, and circles around Fourth Street Live! entertainment district by taking 5th Street northbound and 2nd Street southbound. Weekday 7 a.m. – 7 p.m. • Saturday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Silver signs indicate stops for the 4th Street LouLift."
The silver signs I saw included a number to call for information, but all I got was a recorded message. After waiting for half an hour for the bus to appear, and getting no answer on the phone, my friend and I learned from a regular bus driver that the free circular bus has not run for more than a year because of Covid. So how hard was it to put that information online or on a recorded phone message?
One of the best things that is always available and at a short notice in Louisville is a walking tour provided by a local history buff David Dominé. It's fun, at $25 it's affordable, and you really learn something you did not know about Louisville: that Tom Cruise attended high school there, that the Happy Birthday song was composed there, that local witches whipped up a dangerous storm in 1890 after their beloved tree was cut down, and that they caused a new one to grow from its stump. Dominé has written several books on Louisville ghosts and said he lives in a haunted house himself.
Witches's Tree, a tourist attraction in Old Louisville
The Muhammad Ali Museum is closed only Mondays and Tuesdays so it is likely to be open during a short visit. Even if you are not a boxing fan, the museum is a must for young people to learn about Ali's path from a celebrity boxer to human rights activist. I saw enough of Ali on TV in my salad days, but did not remember he was from Louisville until I landed at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
One of the rare institutions in Louisville that are open seven days a week is the Kentucky Derby Museum. It would be a real shame if it weren't. After all, that's the #1 attraction in Kentucky and makes the city famous worldwide.
Another thing doable at any time in Louisville is crossing the Big Four pedestrian bridge over the Ohio River into Indiana. Not much to do there except grabbing a cool drink and fried food, and watching the Louisville skyline from the Indiana bank of the Ohio River.
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| Big Four Bridge, Louisville |
Downtown Louisville is also attractive. Not to be missed is the historic Brown Hotel with its elegant dining room on the second floor. Of course, the gift shop was closed when we visited on a Tuesday. Further up on the way to the river is 4th Street pedestrian area with pubs and eateries where you can have pizza or sample traditional local barbecue.
The up-and-coming East Market District, also known as NuLu, is home to small art galleries and a growing number of fancy restaurants and indie boutiques. We ate the best-ever hamburger and a fine Cuban sandwich, with a side of mouth-watering grilled Brussel sprouts, at The Grind Burger Kitchen Grille and had world-class espressos in several new coffee shops. The nearby area is home to the Slugger Field and popular Angel's Envy bourbon distillery. The tours fill up well in advance, so unprepared as we were, we could not get in. The downside of NuLu is its size. Places of interest are dispersed over a large area, surrounded by a network of major roads and highways. It takes long walks - too long under the mid-day sun - to get from one point of interest to another in NuLu.
Not so the adjacent Highlands area. Its main drag, Baxter Avenue, is packed with shops, pubs, restaurants, karaoke bars and cafes that keep it busy day and night, especially Thursday through Saturday. Baxter Avenue may be flanked by cemeteries, but there is nothing somber about it. The locally-owned shops offer hand-crafted goods, indie fashion, books and artisanal breads. Unlike gentrified hubs in other U.S. cities, central Louisville avoids mass-produced goods sold in chain stores such as Madewell, Gap, Zara, H & M, Urban Outfitters or TJ Maxx. The Louisville Zoo, with camel rides and a splash park, is also located in Highlands. The Cave Hill Cemetery draws visitors who want to see the final resting places of boxing champion Muhammad Ali and founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain Colonel Harland David Sanders. Sister Patty and Mildred Hill, who composed the Happy Birthday song, also are interred there. Residential streets off Baxter Avenue are worth checking out for elegant homes and manicured gardens.
Louisville seems to be a perfect place to live: with just over 600,000 inhabitants it's not too big, it's beautiful, it has good public transportation and a surprisingly large number of performing art venues for a city of its size. On our last evening in Louisville, we were treated to a free performance of Pinter's Shakespeare in Love in Central Park, just two blocks away from our B & B.
Local people did not seem any different from us here in Washington D.C., but I think I figured out Mitch's secret: he makes sure the elections are held Monday through Wednesday when Kentucky goes to sleep.
