On our way to Louisville, we stopped at Mammoth Cave. The next tour was about 3 hours from when we stopped, so we just hiked a short trail to a bat cave, and went to one of the cave entrances.
In Louisville we stayed at the Galt House hotel. The suite tower was pretty recently updated, and I loved the exercise room with a panoramic view of downtown and the Ohio River. When we arrived, we went to see Madagascar 3, and we laughed our heads off. Then we ate dinner at an Irish pub called The Irish Rover. We also had frozen yogurt at Lula's a couple of times during our stay.
The next day, Richie had the morning off, so I packed as much sightseeing in as I could. We started off at Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum. It was a great museum, and we really learned a lot.
After lunch we went to the Louisville Slugger Museum. It was a really fun museum too, and it was definitely the highlight of the guys' trip. It is a working bat factory, so we went on a tour of the factory, saw bats from a lot of famous players (including the whole Cardinals team from the 2011 world series) and they even got to practice hitting with their favorite players bats in the batting cages.
For dinner we went to Hammerheads (the second highlight of the trip). It was a hole-in-the-wall with absolutely delicious food.
On Wednesday Griffin and I went to the Louisville Zoo and met up with Richie for lunch at a diner downtown.
For dinner we had a great meal at a restaurant called Eiderdown. I think it would be considered a German gastropub? They used a lot of local ingredients, and it was definitely much more up my alley than the boys. Griffin just couldn't believe that I was eating flowers in my salad! We also got to hear Mike Ross preach on Wednesday night, which was very special because he was our pastor when we lived in Jackson, MS.
On Thursday Griffin and I went to the Louisville Science Center. It was a lot of fun and more than we could see in just 3 hours.
For dinner on Thursday we had another fantastic meal at a farm-to-table restaurant Harvest. That is definitely my favorite kind of restaurant, and we loved it!
We headed back home on Friday full of great memories from our special trip with Griffin! We are so thankful that Nana and Bro took care of the girls, so that Griffin could have his one-on-one time with us.
Some other restaurants that we wanted to try, but ran out of time for were:
Decca
The Mayan Cafe
Rye