Woke up relatively early on a Sunday morning, and with no prior commitments for that day, I decided I should go on another adventure.
For these spur-of-the-moment day trips, I usually consult Google Earth to figure out what interesting place is the closest and most reasonable drive. At an hour and a half, Cincinnati, Ohio won that contest. I'm running out of nearby places to explore.
It's only September!
I then did something I never do - I actually planned out what I wanted to see. Wikivoyage is incredibly helpful on that front. Suggestions on things to see, things to do, places to eat, places to sleep - all categorized by your budget. History. Weather. Public transportation routes. Everything you could want to know. As long as it's a place people ever go.
I was gonna stop here and make a joke about how it's less helpful for places like Tajikistan, but that entry is actually pretty solid. No really, go check out Tajikistan. It's even got a cover photo.
I picked out three or four things I wanted to see and thought I could cover in an afternoon, then set sail. As I crossed the Ohio river into the city, traffic got congested and pedestrians proliferated. What was going on?
I approached a main intersection and found blocked off, and I could see beyond it tents, booths, and trucks set up for the sizable crowd gathered around them. I had come into town during some damn festival. Great. Traffic is going to be unbearable, people are going to crowd the attractions, and parking is going to be jacked up for the "Special Event".
I found a parking deck on the edge of the city charging half of what all the other lots were charging and set off on foot toward the city center. As I approached the festival area, I noticed some clearly intoxicated people staggering away. This piqued my curiosity. I took a picture as soon as I reached the outer edge:
Thought that was a cool building in the background as well.
I began to see silly hats with feathers in them, and I could hear music in the distance being sung in a language that clearly wasn't English.
Then I saw the band:
Lederhosen!
Wait a minute. I know what this is. I've seen this before!
I'd stumbled into the middle of a German heritage and/or beer festival, taking over downtown Cincinnati for the weekend. Having read the Wikivoyage page, I sort of figured out why it was happening.
According to the Wiki, Cincinnati was settled largely by German immigrants. To quote:
"These German immigrants built a culture based on beer gardens, beer
brewing, dance and music halls giving Cincinnati a very distinct and
vibrant local culture."
So, there you have it. And the festival felt very authentic. For a moment I thought I was having some sort of flashback PTSD episode of the Lange Nacht:
...except, during the day. And in a big city. With people who speak English as their first language.
There was also this, a dead giveaway that I was still in America:
Dangerous, rickety fair rides. A staple of food festivals nation wide.
Since I had a long drive back, I declined to partake of the beer - at first. But I figured, how often do I accidentally find myself in the middle of a German beer festival? Well, the answer is "twice, since July" but you know what I mean.
I partook of a traditional German brew:
...it was at least the "Oktoberfest" flavor. And Sam Adams was at least trying to be as authentic as possible:
Can't decide if these people are more interested in the band or the football game. Just kidding, I know EXACTLY which one they were more interested in.
Passed this oom-pah band singing a familiar tune:
Shot of one end of the festival from up on high:
I decided to head out at that point, and try to make my way south towards the river, to a bridge I'd picked out from the Wiki article to walk across. I was also on the lookout for the "Skywalk", a raised, covered walkway that is apparently a great way to see the city. After about five blocks, I realized I was heading north, and had to turn around and retrace my steps.
This building was neat:
Colorful.
Two people hit me up for money. One was purporting to be a charity, the other was a white guy trying to commiserate with me about being racially persecuted. I didn't buy it. I also passed a guy playing his drumset on a street corner. He stopped abruptly and shouted a joke before continuing to play. I didn't hear all of it, but it was something like:
"Two cab drivers walk into a bath house...what did Obama say when...'Hope and Change!'"
I'm sure it was hilarious.
A statue:
Finally found an entrance to the skywalk:
But it was closed.
I guess they figured no one would want to tour the city, on a weekend, during a major tourist-drawing festival.
As I approached the river toward the south end of the city, the air gradually got...LOUD.
FOOTBAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Found the bridge:
That's not Cincinnati, by the way. That's a picture of downtown Covington, KY. You cross the bridge, and you're in another state!
The bridge has excellent accommodations for foot traffic, so off I went.
That's the Ohio river, the same one the Louisville sits on. If I jumped in and let the current carry me, eventually I'd be home! Might also die along the way. It's pretty far.
Crossed over into Kentucky, snuck into a hotel to use the restroom, then crossed back.
By that time, the football game had ended, and the deluge of fans were now flooding my way:
They continue all the way into the distance on the other side. You can kind of see 'em.
The now-empty stadium.
Based on the jovial nature of the people in orange and the pronounced scowls of the people in green, I'm guessing that Orange won. Hooray!
Fought my way through the crowd back to the city. There was a park I'd flagged on the Wiki page that I wanted to see, but my time was short, and I still had to make it back to the car on the other side of town. I decided against including the park, which was unfortunate, but turned out t be a good thing - with the football crowd trying to leave town at the same time, I sat in traffic for a good 30 minutes before I was able to make it out of the city.
I'll have to come back, I suppose, and see all the stuff I missed. Maybe I'll get to the park. Maybe the Skywalk will be open. Maybe I'll go to the top of some of the skyscrapers. Hopefully. We'll see.
Parting shot:
There's a Frankfurt, Germany, but a Frankfort, Kentucky. I actually do not think they are related. It's just coincidence. Despite the US's odd habit of copy-and-pasting names for cities from places overseas, this one I think was an accident. Some guy named Frank had a Fort or a Ford or a Fjord, and people called it Frankfort.
Somewhere further down the line, Kentucky made it its capital.
There's also a Bagdad, KY. No idea what that's like.
I drove to Frankfort on the first Saturday in September because I figured I should start seeing places while I still had some warm weather. Cities like Cincinnati and Indianapolis, while now only a drive away rather than a plane flight, were still just too far for a day trip. Those would have to be overnights, and a bit less spur-of-the-moment than "hey it's Saturday, where could I go for an afternoon?"
Frankfort is not a spectacular tourist destination, but it was less than an hour away, and being the capital city, had at least some significance. So off I went.
This office building stood monolithically over the rest of the town, at least twice as tall as anything else:
I think it was just an office building. Well, I think it was just the office building. But enough semantics.
This fountain was near it:
It was a pretty nice fountain.
I should point out that the area was completely deserted up until this point. I saw maybe two people in the immediate vicinity. I guess Saturday afternoons aren't terribly wild and crazy down in ol' Frank's Fort.
Made my way over to this park:
Saw this bridge:
And I thought, "hey! I like bridges. Lemme go ahead and cross it. See what's on the other side."
NOPE.
I believe this is the Kentucky River that the bridge is spanning. Not quite as impressive as one might imagine, it being named after a state. Mississippi got a good river. Ohio too. Kentucky...not so much.
They had a neat mural by the bridge, of the bridge:
Strolled into town:
I thought that was a neat looking street. Almost fancy.
I passed by this building:
Which I thought was the capitol building, or at least somehow related to it. Nope. Turns out I never even got close to the capitol, which as far as I can tell (via Google Earth) is a really cool building and gardens and plaza and...art. Lots of art.
It was on the other side of the river. Damn you bridge!
Not knowing I had missed literally the thing anyone comes to Frankfort to see, I pressed on.
Interesting houses:
I circled back around to near where I had started my on-foot journey:
The obligatory art. Everywhere has some.
And that was pretty much it. Got in the car and returned home.
Being busy with grad school - and certainly busier than I was a month ago, home on summer break - I can count on these trips being far less frequent than they have been. But I'll try to keep it up. Even just within the reasonably drivable vicinity, there are some cool places I want to see, places that in my former North Carolina life would have been plane flights at the very least. Not to mention that Louisville itself is obviously worth a good deal of exploring.
So at last this blog is up to date, but that doesn't mean the end of new entries. I'll see more new places and record them here as they happen. And while places like Indianapolis aren't exactly the same level of excitement as Schladming or München, they're certainly somewhere I'd like to see. It's still an adventure. And I'm still happy to have the opportunity to have it.
So...anyone wanna go to Chicago?
The Biltmore House is famous for being the largest private residence in the entire United States. It was built in the late 1800s and lived in in the early 1900s by the Vanderbilt family, known railroad tycoons - though it should be noted, the people that built and lived in this house were not themselves the tycoons. They were the inheritors of the fortune of the tycoons. Corneilus was the tycoon. George was just lucky enough to be his grandson.
He caught some 1900s disease and died, and his daughter married into the Cecil family, who then lost a good chunk-o-change in the Great Depression. To raise funds, the Cecils opened Biltmore for tourism, and the tradition carries on into the present day.
I didn't get the classic front-of-the-house picture that everyone gets, but if you Google Image search "Biltmore" you'll find more than enough pictures. You'll recognize it if you've ever seen Richie Rich.
Here are a few closer shots, however:
It rained pretty heavily and steadily while we were there.
Had ice cream and poked around the horse-stables-turned-gift-shop:
Still raining.
They had a big ol' greenhouse. I managed to get one picture before my phone, ever the asshole, decided to pretend its battery was dead and shut off.
It doesn't quite do the place justice.
The Biltmore Estate covers 8,000 acres of NC mountain land. There's a winery toward the north end, which is far enough away that it necessitates a drive from the house itself.
It's a neat little quasi-village:
The area was once the center of the Vanderbilt's booming milk cow enterprise, but converted into a winery sometime after the 50s when the advent of grocery stores made milk cow-ing no longer profitable.
We did the wine tour:
By that point it was nearing dinner time, so we went into the town of Asheville for food.
There was some sort of youth drum circle going on in the town square:
And some obligatory town square art:
Asheville's a very artsy place, if you've never been there. Whole lotta beards and dreadlocks. Any of my European friends wanting to visit a more liberal-minded town in the southern US, look no further.
That was all from that. We spent the rest of the week at our mountains house, then returned to Charlotte that weekend. Less than a week later, I was in a car and on my way to Louisville, to start my new life as a grad student. And so ended the summer.
Back in the day, my ancestors on my mother's side were in and around the Stateburg area in South Carolina. The Friersons and the Dargans both attended the Church of the Holy Cross, and somewhere along the line, my great grandfather and great grandmother met, fell in love, married, and started a family. The relative wealth of that generation was disseminated and diluted among children and children's children until it was spread so thin that the estate, Cherry Vale, had to be sold off to pay bills. Sometime later, the US government bought the land, flattened it, and put an Airforce base on it.
All that to say, Stateburg is by no means a tourist destination. We only went there for the family history.
The Church of the Holy Cross is still standing, although it has adopted a curious stucco look:
I guess it thought that would be fashionable.
The graveyard attached is filled with gravestones bearing names from my mother's side of the family:
Sorry to get all grave-stoney on you. I know death isn't the most pleasant topic.
We also went to see the gravesite (more death! aaaah!) of Thomas Sumter, famous throughout South Carolina for being a something-or-other.
See? I took a picture of the information tablet this time. I'm learning.
That was about it.
