Welcome to Lousiville! Ever the polite southerners, they welcome us with class and style as we walked down to the Fourth Street Ward for lunch today.I got in from OH on Wednesday evening, was downtown Chicago on Thursday working at a facility there, and then I took off again on Friday afternoon for this wonderful conference I'm attending. I'll be here for 5 days/nights. Got in on Friday and I'll be leaving later on Wednesday.
Its a little disappointing as I thought I would come and have a little fun over the weekend maybe shopping around and doing some other things, however, I've discovered that there's really not much going on in ...........................................
Turns out - there's nothing downtown Louisville! I couldn't get into the Marriott hotel where the conference was being held, so I booked myself down about 4 blocks from the hotel at the Residence Inn. So, Friday night, I got in around 6:30ish and decided that I was going to stroll down to the Marriott to make sure I knew where I was going and maybe do some window shopping. Instead of strolling, I ended up with quite the brisk pace as buildings were boarded up, homeless people were lying in the gutter (literally) and about 4 men called out to me with "hey baby", "hi'ya sunshine" and other such terms of cat-calling. Hmmm - this was all at 7pm in broad daylight!Today our meetings started and I actually bumped into a few friends so we headed the opposite way of my hotel for lunch and we ran into the Fourth Street which is actually packed full of restaurants of all kinds. It was not a bad area, but it was definitely a littel pocket in a big city.
Then, after my meetings at 4, I had been wanting to go and buy a few new outfits so I thought that I'd head over to a mall, hoping there would be a Banana Republic or J. Crew... When I asked after shopping, the concierge brightly said "Oh! You're in luck! There's an art fair going on!" And then I explained that I wanted to do some clothes shopping and her face fell a little, but then she grabbed a map and started giving me directions -- to the Thrift Store. I said "no Thrift Store" and she said, "the Hilton next door has some cute sweater sets in their gift shop!". NO! Turns out, as the concierge put it, Louisville really doesn't have a lot of shopping downtown. THATS JUST SAD! It leads me to believe that their banners strung up along the city's lamposts really do have a point!
" Welcome to POSSIBILITY City" -- they need to add -- "its possibility because we got us some work to do!"
FYI -- its the Kentucky Derby this week. Last night when I got in, there were tons of people pouring out of hotels with ball gowns on because it was the Derby Gala. Tonight, its the opening of Churchill Downs - they say there are about 45,000 people there tonight. This morning, the city was all chopped up with barriers as they had the infamous Derby Mini Marathon. I was disappointed I didn't realize this as I probably would have run it since it was just a mini. It would have given me something to do while I'm stuck here in the Possibility City.....
In case you want to check it out - here's the Churchill Downs link http://www.churchilldowns.com/
1 comment:
I drove through Louisville Saturday early morning, around 4 ish. Too bad I didn't know you'd be there. I could have stopped and had breakfast with you. :)
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