Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Spring Vacation - The Last Day: Louisville, Kentucky

Hello!  Today I have my very last post of our Spring Vacation to share.  For those of you who may have missed these posts, my husband and I basically took a road trip waaaaaaaaay back in April and I have been sharing our journey on my blog ever since.  We visited three states in the course of one week:  Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky.  Today's post is all about our stop in Louisville, Kentucky. We decided to visit Louisville because quite often on previous trips we would have to drive pass Louisville and we saw the cute, little, vintage bridge leading into the city and thought 'geez, that looks pretty, someday we'll have to check it out'.  Well, someday finally came, and we spent the day exploring sweet Louisville.

Louisville is a beautiful city that really works hard to retain it's vintage charm.  The downtown is filled with beautiful old buildings that are absolutely gorgeous.


 I always love brick paved streets….don't you?
 This statue is huge and my husband found it quite humorous and filled my day with one silly joke after another about it.  Ah, men never really grow up, do they?  Oh well, he provided lots of entertainment for us and we always had a landmark that was easily identified when we got lost.
 Our first stop was the famous Louisville Slugger Museum.  Everyone always stops and takes their picture by this huge bat.
 For only a dollar my husband got to be a kid again and play baseball.
 In addition to batting cages and a store, there is a museum inside that you can tour and learn all about how the bats are made and the history of baseball.
 Louisville really works hard to preserve it's history.  Even if buildings can no longer be salvaged, they still keep the front facade of the building, and build an entirely new building behind it.

 This limousine was covered in those little red gems that people usually put in the bottom of clear vases.  Can you imagine applying that many gems to a limo?  I wonder how much time that took?
 This is the children's museum.  I love the colors.
 I love the tower on the right side of this historic building.
 There is a lot of modern architecture in Louisville too, such as their Fine Arts Building.
 A beautiful town square filled with fountains.

Of course everyone knows Louisville is famous for their Kentucky Derby, but I found it interesting that they had horse statues like this dotting the downtown.  Where I come from, we have cows made of metal that are decorated in different designs.  This is the first time I've seen this idea with horses, and I must say, I like the horses better!

 I come from a family that has a lot of musicians, so I was really fascinated with Louisville's Fourth Street Live!  They basically took a street and put a stage in the middle of it, and covered it so that bands could perform no matter what the weather.  Yet, it is still outside!  Surrounding the stage are lots of restaurants and bars, so you can enjoy your meal, and a show at the same time.  It's a great way to bring more traffic downtown and to let new musicians show their talent.  I love it!
 The entrance to Fourth Street Live.  The beams are covered with glass to keep rain out.

 The back of the stage:
 Because they don't have to worry about rain, the lights and sound speakers can be left up all summer long;  yet light still comes through the covered area:
 There is an upper food court with a bridge above the stage and a large monitor.  On the day we were there it was Good Friday so there were not any concerts, but I can only imagine this place flooded with people when there is a concert.


 I loved the old fire escape above and these gorgeous old buildings below.
 Another painted, decorated horse:
 More beautiful old buildings.  I think the first one use to be the Stockyard, and the one below that is the City Hall Annex.


 You know I can't visit any town without taking a picture of at least one gorgeous church!  I love old churches.  And the picture of me in the photo next to the church was taken in a second lovely downtown courtyard.  They sure have lots of beautiful courtyards in Louisville to enjoy a lunch outside.
 I loved the free doors on this red brick building.
 Here's another horse for you:
 Every town we visited on this trip was situated on a river and had a beautiful river walk.
 This however I had never seen before.  I don't know what these large cylinders were for, but I thought it so interesting that they filled them with forsythia.  The blooms made something very ugly into something very beautiful.
Well I hope you enjoyed hearing about my Spring Vacation.  I have another Staycation coming up in August so I will have more travel posts to share then.

Have a great day!  Amy

2 comments:

  1. What a fun vacation Amy, Louisville seems like a fun city to visit. Love the horses and statues. I remember seeing the cows in Chicago before, never horses. Thanks so much for sharing your trip, I love visiting cities too. It's a little hard visiting cities with kids, but we did manage to visit Madison, WI recently and LOVED it.

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  2. We always stay in Louisville on our way to visit family in PA but have never been tourists. After seeing this, that might have to change!

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