Come to Louisville (a letter to a friend)

Hi friend,

Lonely Planet says Louisville is the top U.S. destination in 2013. I wish you'd visit, so I'm writing to let you know why it's always a good time to come to Louisville. I know I already did this on the podcast, but in case you missed it, there is exciting stuff going on every month. 

OK, so January and February are tough and almost over. We did have the UCI Cyclo-Cross World Championships in January, and it was the first time they took place in the United States. I'm sorry you missed it. Regardless of when you come, though, I can always offer:

-A food extravaganza - Gabe and I both cook, but we probably won't while you're here. We want to take you to all our favorite places. You want to eat that crazy Louisville sandwich, the Hot Brown? We'll do it. Do you prefer vegetarian? Hillbilly Tea, Dakshin, Vietnam Kitchen, or Queen of Sheba have some good veggie and vegan options. We'll go to Hammerheads and over-order appetizers, Mayan Cafe and snack on salbutes and the best lima beans you've ever had. There will be at least one brunch. 

-A drink extravaganza - We may not cook for you, but we will make you some drinks. If you're up for it, we'll take you to the many fine establishments serving signature cocktails and craft beers around town. We'll while away an afternoon with beer at Holy Grale, a former chapel. We can spend the whole day at Garage Bar, playing ping-pong while going broke on Basil Gimlets, pickled vegetables, and turkey wings. We can tackle part of the Urban Bourbon Trail. Last call is at 4 a.m., so there's plenty of time to visit a few places, endurance allowing. I'll be done by 2, but we have an extra key. 

-The Bourbon Trail - This is less Louisville and more Kentucky, but we can always visit any distillery you like. Most are within an hour's drive. Learning about bourbon never gets old. Neither do samples. 

-The Colonel's Grave - Oh, you're going to come to Kentucky and not pay homage to the man behind the state's most famous export? We live about five minutes from the cemetery where Colonel Sanders is buried, and we can stop by on the way to brunch. The cemetery, Cave Hill, is also an arboretum, so we could also walk around longer. 

Depending on your interests, we can also hit up the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, the Kentucky Derby Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, the Thomas Edison House (see, we have non-sports-related museums!), the Frazier History Museum, Waterfront Park, or my new favorite, the Big Four Bridge. Maybe when you visit, the Indiana approach will be finished. Then we can walk across the Ohio River and actually descend into Indiana, where new adventures await. 

Now a few events you might want to plan your trip around:

Humana Festival of New American Plays (Feb. 27 - April 7) - If you love theater, you should visit during this month-long festival. Then I will finally partake of this event in my own town. 

Kentucky Derby Festival - The number of events for this festival increases every year. Here are my favorites:

Thunder Over Louisville (April 20) - This gigantic fireworks show launches Derby Festival (there are Derby Festival events before this, but really. This is not Mardi Gras. I cannot celebrate a horse race for a full month). We can join the masses on the banks of the Ohio River, or watch it on TV at a bar, where it is guaranteed to be dry and warm. 

The Great Balloon Glow (April 26) - This is now part of the Great Balloon Festival, making it a festival within a festival. There are also two hot air balloon races, but I love seeing them all gathered and fired up at night on Bowman Field (an airport). 

The Great Steamboat Race (May 1) - Another event I have never been to, but it's still a favorite, because it is a race between two steamboats. The winner is actually determined by points earned from challenges that include a calliope contest. 

Cherokee Triangle Art Fair (April 27-28) - This is not actually part of Derby Festival, but it  happens the weekend before Derby, right outside my apartment. It's smaller and less insane than St. James in October. 

Derby (May 4) - I have not been to the Derby yet. We can go together! Just know we'll have to mill around by the paddock or in the infield. I have no connection for fancy seats. We could also go to Oaks, the fillies' race on Friday. This may be less crowded, but not less expensive. In any case, we'll find a good party to attend. The bars stay open all night Friday. 

Forecastle Festival (July 12-14) - The line-up has yet to be announced for this three-day music festival on the river. Wilco and My Morning Jacket headlined last year. Let's see who they have coming first. 

Lebowski Fest / Pee Wee Over Louisville (July 20-21/Sept. 7)- Again. I've never been to Lebowski Fest, but if you come for it, you bet I'll go. More interesting to me is the first Pee Wee Over Louisville, organized by the founder of Lebowski Fest, Will Russell. Imagine -- if Pee Wee Over Louisville goes the way of Lebowski Fest, you'll be able to brag that you were at the first one. Update -  due to a cease & desist letter from the Paul Reubens people, Pee Wee Over Louisville has been canceled.  

Kentucky State Fair (Aug 15-25) - If you've never been to a state fair, you should go to your home state's. Or come here in August while ours is on. Oversized produce. Quilts. Antique Bibles. A duckling slide. Freddy Farm Bureau. Deep-fried Girl Scout cookies. Trust me. You'll love it. 

So… when are you visiting? 

Just Exploring Cahokia Mounds

I lived within 30 minutes of an UNESCO World Heritage site for about four years and never visited it.

Cahokia Mounds was the largest pre-historic community north of central Mexico.
From 900 to 1200 A.D., it was the center of Mississippian Indian culture. Twenty thousand people lived within roughly six square miles, in which they built about 120 mounds. Today, the site is half that size and is dominated by Monks Mound, the largest man-made earthen structure in North America. Man-made as in people carried ten stories worth of dirt in woven baskets to build it. 

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Monks Mound in the distance

We finally visited over the holidays (my in-laws live in Southern Illinois). When we pulled into the parking lot, the first mounds I saw resembled golf course hills. But Monks Mound loomed above the parking lot, and getting up the stairs winded me.

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Looking down the staircase up Monks Mound.

Despite the interpretive center's recreations of Native American life at Cahokia Mounds, I had difficulty envisioning it. Perhaps it was the main road running through the middle of the site, separating the museum from the largest mound. Maybe it was seeing the highway, a landfill, and St. Louis from the top of Monks Mound. The exhibits at the museum are text-heavy, and the main thing I remember from all that reading is the inhabitants of Cahokia played a game called chunkey. This involved rolling a disc and throwing spears where they thought the disc would stop. 

I'm glad we finally visited -- this is why I now keep a list of places to visit near my own home. I live near another UNESCO site now, Mammoth Cave, and I have yet to see it. But it's on the list. 

#FriFotos - Views

I spent too long going through photos today looking for the perfect photo of sweeping views for today's #FriFotos theme. I finally settled on something less grand. 

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View out the window of a bathroom at Mammy's hostel in Lome, Togo

This is the view out of a window in the bathroom of the hostel where the Peace Corps lodged us for our first few days of training. My first morning in Togo, I woke up under a mosquito net to unfamiliar sounds -- a rooster, a street vendor's cries. My shower was cold (but cold running water, better than bucket baths in my future). I stopped back in the bathroom to take this photo before heading to my first Togolese breakfast, excited about all my "firsts" after days of "lasts" in the States (last hot shower in the States, last margarita, last sleep). 

#FriFotos: Peaks

I went out with a #FriFotos post, so it feels appropriate to return with one.  

As a Swiss-American lucky enough to spend a week in the mountains every few summers, "peaks" means the Swiss Alps, specifically the Bernese Oberland. But while I know the names of a few famous peaks ( Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau) I still can't identify them. Multiple searches finally confirmed that this is the Wetterhorn with the Rosenlaui Glacier to the left.  

I took this picture on a hike with my mother. We started in Meiringen, a town in the valley and hiked up to Grosse Scheidegg, past the Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes fought Professor Moriarty to the death. My mom has difficulty hiking uphill, and I have problems going downhill. I feel slightly guilty for dragging a 60-something woman 10 miles uphill, but I bought her an ice cream at the top.

Ok, I know. I'm the worst. I wanted the ice cream more than she did. 

Just Exploring Venice Beach

Last week, Gabe had to attend exactly one day of a seminar in L.A., so I took off a few days to join him on an extended, though brief, California visit. Since we only had two non-travel, non-work days, we decided to skip trying to see the L.A. sites and just spend our time at the beach. I love ocean-swimming, and I blew off temperature warnings. I’ve been in the Gulf in December and a St. Louis pool in November, and I relish the shock of diving headfirst into cold water and swimming until my body acclimates.

But oh, man. The Pacific Ocean is COLD.

​Me in my granny swimming suit, trying to work up the courage to get in the cold water.

Between beach-time, we saw a bit of Venice by walking around our neighborhood, looking for food and drinks. We stayed a few blocks off Abbot Kinney, named the “Coolest Block in America” by GQ in its April issue. There is little I can reasonably afford on that street, apart from food, and even that’s pushing it ($9 juice?! You get to take the jar it’s served in with you, and it’s very good, but $9 juice…). Between this hipster strip and the beach, there is the lovely, wild California plant life taking over sidewalks, and there is the Venice Boardwalk, full of vendors, tourists, homeless people, and just… strangeness. My most memorable Venice Beach characters include the large, dreaded man in an oversized purple, plush top hat rapping about passers-by; a turbaned man rollerblading while playing electric guitar; and at least two different men singing their requests for money so they could buy marijuana and booze (to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock”: “Jingle bell, jingle bell, help me get drunk.” Not even seasonably appropriate.) 

Hip bike in front of a hip store on the coolest block in America.​

​On Friday, we avoided the boardwalk mayhem by renting bikes from J’s Rentals. For $20 each, we got to keep our snazzy beach cruisers for the day (until 8 p.m.), allowing for a leisurely bike ride to Santa Monica. The madness of the boardwalk stops right around where the boardwalk ends, although it picks up again at the Santa Monica Pier. It’s mostly just tourists there, though. We biked up to the Annenberg Community Beach House, but turned around without visiting, opting for the ocean instead. What we really wanted was a Mai-Tai, but sadly, there are limited bar options right on the beach in Venice and what we saw of Santa Monica. You can find beer, wine, and champagne, but no real beach bar. And by real beach bar, I mean plastic chairs and wooden tables in the sand. There is none of that, and instead of Mai-Tais, we had ice cream in the shadow of a ferris wheel. That was good, too. It’s a bad idea to drink and go swimming in the ocean.

Just before we left to go home, a friend and her husband drove us around the Venice canals. Abbot Kinney, the guy who developed Venice, created it with the original in mind, so there are canals and homes squished in around them. You can walk along the water, and if you can get to that neighborhood without a car, do, as parking looked to be a nightmare.

Other Venice/L.A. randomness:
-the bus costs A DOLLAR

-motorcycles drive between lanes while the cars are stopped in highway traffic. This seems like a terrible and dangerous idea, motorcyclists

-LA likes Selena. I heard 3 Selena songs in less than 24 hours. This is good, because I like Selena, too

-Want an amazing donut? Drive out to Glendora and visit the Donut Man. Get the strawberry donut. I was skeptical. I was wrong (here’s a photo gallery from the LA Times)

-The most bizarre CVS I’ve ever seen:

I will have to get back to L.A., though, because I saw next to nothing of it. Seriously. Not even the Hollywood sign. But I got my beach on.

Friday Photos: Climbing the Schilthorn in Switzerland

​About two years ago, my brother, dad and I hiked from Stechelberg, in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, to the peak of the Schilthorn, a 2000 meter hike. You start in the valley, immediately begin climbing, and six to eight hours later, you arrive at the summit, where you can take the cable car back to Stechelberg and catch the bus home.

The hike begins below the treeline, plateaus briefly in alpen meadows where grazing cows provide distraction (and sometimes obstacles), and then you start clambering over large boulders until you reach this path through shale. Depending on how many breaks you need, there’s only about an hour of hiking left from this point (there’s more boulder clambering, and a stretch of path where you can look over the edge into the other valley and imagine yourself falling, if not to your death, then at least to your serious injury. Better to just look ahead).

My brother and I have conquered this mountain twice. I plan to do it at least once more, knees permitting.

Happy Friday. May bad knees not get in the way of any weekend plans.

Friday Photos - Swiss Cows

This blog is very quickly becoming a Friday photo blog, but we’re at three business days until unemployment and I hope for at least one update a week to break up the “Friday photo, Friday photo, Friday photo” pattern.

Today, I give you Swiss cows.

Matador editor Carlo Alcos (@vagab0nderz on Twitter) asked about favorite sounds while traveling. Mine? Cow bells in the Alps. That sound reminds me of summer, hiking, sausage cooking over open fire (while I eat a cheese sandwich), Alpine wildflowers, cold, blue-green lakes and parasailers gliding high above valleys.

Happy weekend — I’m going to a bourbon distillery. Anyone else got good plans (like going to Costa Rica for the weekend)?

Louisville To Do List

I have a bad habit of living places and failing to visit major sights. I saved St. Louis’s Arch for the last half year of college and have yet to see Cahokia Mounds. While studying abroad in Geneva, I went to two museums and never set foot in the UN (although I did have lunch at the UNHCR). I planned for a year to bike from my village in Togo to nearby waterfalls in Benin, but never did it. And the major venues, restaurants and historical sights I missed in my six months in New Orleans make up a list too embarrassing to even begin listing.

I’ve been in Louisville for almost a year now and I’ve seen the Colonel’s grave, been to a Bats game, listened to live music at Waterfront Park, eaten at Proof on Main (and been in the men’s bathroom at 21C), bet on races at Churchill Downs (no Derby, though) and picked blueberries at Huber’s. Yet there are many places I keep thinking about that could easily get pushed aside and go the way of the Beninese waterfalls.

So as Gabe and I headed out of state for our 4th of July weekend, we made a list. I’ve added to it, taking some recommendations from Louisville Magazine’s “50 Things Every Louisvillian Should Do” (June 2010). We’ve since been to Frankfort and Lexington (despite the title of this post, the list includes things outside of Louisville).

Kentucky's capitol (in Frankfort, in case you forgot)​

These To Dos remain:

- at least one distillery tour. We’d like to do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, but I think visiting at least one distillery is a more realistic goal.

- Jefferson Memorial Forest

- Bernheim Forest - I like hiking. I’ve done zero hiking since last August.

- Falls of the Ohio – I’d like to see fossils, since I can’t see any falls.

- Mammoth Cave - According to the website, this is the world’s longest known cave system. True story: I’ve never been in a cave. Ok, that’s not a true story, but I’ve never been in a cave like this.

- Cincinnati – they have Trader Joe’s there

- the Old Seelbach Bar – F. Scott Fitzgerald drank here and featured it in The Great Gatsby. Louisville Magazine says I’m supposed to drink a Manhattan here, but I think I’ll just have the bourbon on ice.

- both the First Friday Trolley Hop and the Frankfort Avenue Trolley Hop (beware of the trolley clang if you follow this link)

- a drag show at Connection

- bike at least part of the Louisville Loop, which will one day be a connected 100-mile trail

- the Muhammad Ali Center

- the Louisville Zoo -  I always have mixed feelings visiting zoos, but I’ll go to any city’s zoo at least once.

What else? The Kentucky State Fair is on the agenda for August, but am I missing something you love about the area (notice that “the area” can extend to Cincinnati)? And if any of my three readers are interested in helping an item on this list happen (Gabe has been to some places and is less interested in others), let me know. I plan on being here for a while yet, but that’s the same thing I said about the waterfalls.