We left Bardstown and headed up to Louisville, where we stopped off at the home of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs. We didn’t stop here as a race track was starting to buzz with visitors arriving for the afternoon’s racing, we just nosed about and admired the stands and horse enclosures.
We did stop at the Mohammed Ali centre, a museum showcasing his life as a young boxer, as an adult boxer, his fight against enlistment in the Vietnam war and as a public figure afterwards, his involvement in religion and charity. It was enlightening, interesting and very informative. We had just arrived and got into the lift to start the tour, when a fresh suited man entered with us, along with another couple. It transpires that this was the Mayor of Louisville and he welcomed us to his lovely city!
Indy
Our next stop was at the Indianapolis Motor racing track, home to the Indy 500, NASCAR, Moto GP and the USA Grand Prix! The museum was amazing, full of original working race cars, lots of driver memorabilia and information on historic speeds, dates, winners and record breakers. We took a ride around the track, in a minibus being driven by two old ex-employees, both flowing with information. We learned that until 1909 he track was made up of red bricks, but with the improvement in engines and tyres, the bricks were tarmacked over and a metre of bricks were left by the winning line. It is customary for winners to get out, kneel down, and kiss the bricks, so we did!
Back to Chicago via Joliet
We headed back up towards Chicago, back through the prairie lands again, before stopping at Joliet, just outside Chicago, for our last night together. Joliet is on Route 66, but is a large modern town nowadays. We went to a bar/restaurant called Juliet’s and had a lovely meal and a few glasses of wine!
It was so cold that night, minus 9c!! Food was lovely, and I got to try the national favourite – deep fried truffle ravioli – simply delicious, followed by home made tiramisu!!!
After 4
weeks together, we dropped Mike and Brenda at Chicago airport and we spent a
few more days with friends Paula and Perry at their apartment on the outskirts
of town, chilling and relaxing. One of
my requests during our stay was to visit a cat café, Paula had made it her job
when travelling the world to visit as many cat cafes as possible
(www.theneighbor’scat.com), while Perry tries chocolate milk in an effort to
find the best in the world, or the best in the USA (www.afoolzerrand.com).
Paula’s view
So we went
to a Cat Arcade, the owners of a cat rehoming charity have set out a room with
old arcade games and sofas and chairs, so cats and public can interact in a
relaxing environment. The cats were so
happy to be stroked, played with, cuddled and cooed over and this helps with
their socialization before they are rehomed. Whilst we were there a man arrived
with a cat carrier and scooped up a lovely older cat, was given advice on how
to let the cat settle on arrival at its new home and he left, grinning like a
Cheshire…..cat!
A sassy
grey feline was happy to be stroked, rolling over for tummy rubs, but every so
often let me know she had had enough!
We popped into an old building which was home to the Schlitz Brewery, a “tied house” that sprung up after Prohibition (1890 – 1903), a Tavern owned and operated by the brewing company in what could have passed as an ornate residential property.
That ends our journey to the USA, hope you have enjoyed all the pictures and write ups!!
We left the
endless flat prairie land – clapperboard houses with long driveways through the
fields and white log fencing that reminded us of Little House on the Prairie
and headed into Kentucky and Bardstown, rolling hills of greenery and forests,
dotted with roadkill every few miles – deer, squirrels and badgers. It was so green and gently hilly that it is
likened to Oxfordshire and we can see that.
When planning this part of the trip, several web sites recommended three days in the area with a visit to 4 or 5 distilleries each day with a designated non-drinking driver of course. Each visit offers a tasting, and each distillery is several miles apart even though on the maps they look close together so we managed 3 in one day and 2 in another. This was hampered (in a lovely way) by the fact that we had met a lovely couple, he was from Coventry (of all places!) and she was American, and they helped us feel like locals, plying us with alcohol and food at night! Their hospitality went beyond anything we had experienced before, we were introduced to dignitaries in the town and to a chief plant engineer at another distillery that we were then invited to for a private tour, but we really did run out of time….and never got to see him and his brewery.
We stopped a few days in an old town called Bardstown, and on the Sunday night, stopped at The Old Talbott Tavern, built in 1779 and recognised as the oldest western stagecoach stop in America, the hotel part is said to be haunted! European Americans settled here in 1780, Bardstown is the second oldest city in Kentucky, the town was formally established in 1788.
9 Bourbon Distilleries in 1 Town!
In 1789, Baptist minister Elijah Craig pretty much saved the American soul when he developed America’s signature spirit – bourbon. Since the first barrel was produced over 200 years ago, it’s helped build the lives of Bardstown residents who’ve earned their living by distilling America’s native spirit. Established by European Americans in 1780, Bardstown is the second oldest city in Kentucky county.
Today, visitors can tour Bardstown’s nine distilleries as well as enjoying bourbon entertainment, bourbon-inspired dining, bourbon history, and bourbon shopping.
The distillery
tours were all different.
We started
at Heaven Hill, America’s largest family owned and operated distilling company,
home to Larceny, Elijah Craig and Rittenhouse (our 3 tasters) as well as Evan
Williams, Fighting Cock, Georgia Moon, Henry McKenna, Mellow Corn, Old
Fitzgerald and Pikesville Bourbons ; a small batch brewery where they still
regularly roll the barrels in storage and hold a competition to practice the
art of barrel rolling and loading in a purpose built area outside.
Entrance
Rickhouses
Inside a rickhouse
Some of the tasters
The barrel rolling area
At the Jim Beam factory, we watched traditional barrels being loaded into the “rickhouses” where the barrels are stored. We were able to dip our fingers into the “mash” and taste the sweet malty liquid before it is distilled; we watched the distilling control room monitoring the flow of liquid before it emerges as a clear flow of “wine”, it’s then poured into barrels, stored for several years before emerging a deep red colour. We tasted Knob Creek straight from the barrel, before David enjoyed dipping a bottle of bourbon into the red wax to seal it. He picked his own bottle, washed it in watered down bourbon, put it into the bottling plant and collected it the other end, full and stoppered.
Jim Beam is
also home to Basil Haydens, Bookers, Bakers as well as Knob Creek.
A delivery
Some family history
Good old Jim!
Ingredients lists
Tasting the mash
The clear liquid before it is barrelled.
The complete automated process
On to Maker’s
Mark distillery, this was a small scale operation, set in lovely landscaped
gardens and buildings that were established by the owner’s wife (Mrs Burks) back
in 1815 after Mr Burks built a water powered grain mill on the site in 1805. All the processes were visible, all
operational and all original, including printing their own labels! We could taste the mash in a wooden open
barrel, and saw the large brewing vats. The
tasting was interesting, here we learned all about adding a drop of water to
the bourbon, how it changed the molecules and therefore the taste.
Again,
David was able to dip his own bottle, this time the process was heavily “health
and safety” aware!
Next we visited
Barton 1792, established in 1879 and the oldest running distillery in Kentucky,
and distilled with water from its own spring a few miles away. It is called 1792 after the year Kentucky
became an official state of the USA, based on the original distillery,
Ridegwood Reserve, which was also established in 1792. It’s now owned by a large conglomerate which
also produce Glenmore and Buffalo Trace.
However, the most varied tasting was in the “whole county of Kentucky” where David tried every different one he could, whilst he could!
St Louis
We stopped for two days in St Louis, pronounced, St Lewis to us Brits! It’s in the county of Missouri along the Mississippi River. Its 630-ft. Gateway Arch, built in the 1960s, honors the early 19th-century explorations of Lewis and Clark and America’s westward expansion, a fascinating bone shaking tram ride to the top and then a video show and tour of the museum below round off the trip.
Replica paddle steamers are found on the river, and the Soulard district is home to barbecue restaurants and bars playing blues music. The Cardinals (baseball at Busch Gardens) and NFL (hockey) are based here, as well as the America’s Centre, a huge arena full of sporting memorabilia and a Walk of Fame on the pavements outside.
We took the
Amtrak train from Detroit to Central Station in Chicago, a lovely relaxing
journey of about 5 hours in a spaciously comfortable, clean and quiet train
that sped through city suburbs, fields, forests and endless rolling plains,
alongside rivers and ending up circling the bottom part of Lake Michigan before
heading up to Chicago.
We had booked an apartment right in the centre of Chicago, modern and comfortable, right beside a huge shopping centre and residential skyscraper called Water Tower Place, which was home to a Ritz Hotel, 2 schools, 8 levels of shops, a theatre, restaurants and the first vertical “mall” in the world.
The original Water Tower used to pump water all over the City, it’s now a museum.
Being our first night in the City, I went up onto the roof terrace of our apartment block and admired the view, an enjoyable voyeuristic look into night time activities in other apartment blocks! I didn’t stay there long, it was very cold, by this time about minus 2c!
That evening we headed into the City and immediately came across an iconic restaurant called The Pancake House, a bizzarely built subterranean structure, made famous by the Big Bang Theory, we just had to stop and go in. We had almost got used to large American plates of food, until we ordered 4 shared starters off the menu – they were sooo big we could only manage a shared dessert afterwards, no mains!!
As we only
really had 48 hours here, Chicago was explored again on a tourist trambus, a
bus made to look like an old tram with the driver giving running
commentary. The Old Navy Pier is a pier jutting
out into the Lake, full of restaurants and entertainment facilities, I’m sure
it would be heaving in the summer but very empty in the cold winter.
It had started to snow just after we arrived, it was soooo cold!! We saw the Trump building, one of many, right on the edge of the financial part of the city. We rode down Wacker Drive and Clinton Street, and around the Magnificent Mile, where you have to make an appointment to gain entry into the exclusive boutique shops and luxury fashion outlets. We drove past the first McDonalds and RainForest Cafe, both started in Chicago.
We were also amazed at the number of large parks in the city, Millenium, Wicker, Grant, Hyde and Lincoln Park which has its own zoo.
We collected our hire car the next morning, a vehicle the Americans call a “caravan” – 6 seater people carrier to you and me and trudged through the sludgy snow to the start of Route 66 for the obligatory photo – ready for the next part of the journey.
Our Amtrak Journey
The Chicago Skyline as we pulled in
Grand Central Station, Chicago
The Pancake House & other Chicago views
Our starters/mains
The funky bathrooms!
In our apartment block.
Our neighbours.
Breaded chicken whoppers!
Massive meatballs!
Trumnp Tower, Chicago
Prepping our hire car!
Waiting for a train!
Dinner in the Pancake House.
Inside the Water Tower Reception area.
The first Rainforest Cafe, in Chicago.
Route 66 – Chicago to Springfield
Route 66 was the old original road from Chicago in the east to Santa Monica on the Pacific coast in the west, build by a series of Federal Highways Acts completed in 1926 and was the largest public works project ever undertaken in the USA. It helped distribute the population from areas affected most by the Great Depression to new areas in the west. During 1945 to 1965 many businesses sprung up along the road to support the travelers – restaurants, motels, hotels, service stations, novelty shops as well as small towns to support the workers.
Its total length is 2488 miles but we only travelled 220 miles of it. The Mother Road as it’s called is one continuous road but signs send you off, through towns along the route, to stop at iconic restaurants, hot dog stalls, donut shops, novelty sellers and “diners” galore! 220 miles should theoretically take you 3.5 hours but we took all day, stopping off at an Armish village store to buy apple and toffee flavoured popcorn and homemade peanut butter (with marshmallows!!), another stop to look at hundreds of classic American cars in a dealers (we had hoped to hire one but insurance charges kill that option) and several stops at silly road side signs.
One evening we had booked into “Route 66 Hotel and Conference Centre” expecting a modern hotel maybe with a spa or pool, tastefully decorated, with a museum dedicated to Route 66. The first sign of this not meeting our expectations was the old car and motorbike in front of the reception doors. Decaying, broken windows, paint peeling….that was just the car. The rooms were off a V shaped corridor, internal rooms with glass windows, covered in curtains, looking into the corridor. The corridors were flowing with vintage posters, photos, newspaper cutting, cigarette and vending machines from the 60’s.
So, we entered the room, pulled back the curtains and found…….brown nylon carpet, brown blankets and bedcovers (no sign of a plush cotton covered duvet here), dark brown hotel furniture and a white dial up glow in the dark phone!!! It hadn’t been touched since the 70’s although I’m sure it was clean, it was just too dark to see!!!!!!!!
Sadly, the restaurant on site was a hang out for youngsters playing fruit machines so we ate out that night, at a popular chain called “Steak and Shake”, turned out to be a limited burger menu but a huge milkshake menu, shame none of tried one! We needed alcohol to help us sleep in the brown rooms 🙂
start of Route 66 in Chicago
One of the first iconic statues we saw.
A display of memorabilia in a diner.
Yes, it was snowing whilst we were there!
This truck was a common sight.
Beautiful autumn colours.
The Infamous Route 66 Hotel & Conference Centre!
Lovely brown interior.
The exterior of the hotel!
Some of the cars for sale at a dealer on the route.
This was in a worse condition that David’s GT, look aove how much they wanted for it!!
Santa Claus – A true story of Christmas!
We stopped for lunch at Santa Claus, a perpetual Christmas town, just before Bardstown! It has a large store that sells Christmas paraphernalia all year, except when it’s closed January to March for re-stocking!! Lunch was a pleasant buffet of pizza and salad, relatively cheap at $7 per head, before we bought a few items in the Christmas shop. The town was oddly dotted with larger than life sized images of Santa….made us all smile.
The high street is called Christmas Boulevard. The main development – where most of the town’s 2,500 people live – is called Christmas Lake Village. In the gated community, which began in the 1960s, the main streets are named after the three wise men – Melchior, Balthazar, and Kaspar.
Others roads are named after Rudolph’s reindeer – take a left down Prancer Drive and you hit Vixen Lane – while one street is simply called Chestnut by the Fire. In Santa Claus, Indiana, it’s Christmas 365 days a year.
In the 19th Century, the town was called Santa Fee, but, when residents applied for a post office, they were asked to pick another name – it sounded too similar to Santa Fe, 200 miles north.
On Christmas Eve, the residents of Santa Fee got together to try to pick a new name. They sat round a potbelly stove when, suddenly, the doors blew open. A little girl, after seeing the doors open, heard bells. “It’s Santa Claus!” she gasped, and that was that.
Around 1914, they started receiving children’s letters to Santa Claus – and the town, led by postmaster James Martin, started replying. The post office now receives 20,000 letters every year, from all over America and the world. Most are addressed to the PO Box, but some envelopes simply say: Santa Claus, North Pole.
The person in charge of replying is the Chief Elf, Pat Koch. She is 86, has degrees in nursing and theology (the latter earned aged 70), and brims with human spirit, not just Christmas spirit. Mrs Koch (pronounced Cook) leads a team of around 200 volunteers. They read the letters, take a printed reply, fill in the child’s name, and add a personal message, sending them off just before Christmas!
In October, Samson was put into storage in Spain, together with our friends Mike and Brenda’s motorhome. Anything attractive to ants (the bane of our life along with mozzies) has been double wrapped and packed away or dumped! Samson was to be cared for by a Dutch family, surrounded by several large Alsations and Doberman(s) in a 10 foot walled and fenced enclosure, wedged between caravans and boats, safe as houses!
For those who didn’t know how this trip evolved, we made friends with Mike and Brenda in Portugal, about 18 months ago. They mentioned a trip to Detroit to a 5 day Motown musical event, in about a year’s time and asked if we wanted to join them, we said that sounds great! Last autumn, they added in a wedding event after Mike proposed! It was booked for Friday during the Motown A Go Go, so we became part of the wedding party!
David and I decided to continue our stay in America after Detroit and do a short trip on Route 66 and down to Kentucky for David to experience the genuine Bourbon trail, being a bourbon fan! Mike and Brenda asked to join us on this part, we said sounds great! Cheapest flights were with Norwegian Air from Barcelona to New York so a 5 day stay in the Big Apple came first. **We can highly recommend Norwegian Air, Dreamliner planes, and option to bid to upgrade from economy to Premium class and superb service.
Our flight left Barcelona airport on time on the 16th October 2019 and flew through the afternoon, arriving in New York at 9pm, to a blustery and wet evening! We finally returned on the 12th November, heavier, wiser, happier, more knowledgeable and much much lighter in pocket!!
This blog is mainly pictures with a short write up about each stop during our trip, we experienced so much that it would take months to write about! We hope you enjoy the pictures, as much as we enjoyed taking them!!
Our route over October and November 2019.
New York, New York – so good they named it twice!!
We arrived in New York’s Newark airport on a wet windy evening and got into a taxi to our Hotel in Newark just a few miles away. Newark is opposite the island of New York so we negotiated the numerous transport options each day and made it to Times Square on one day, and “Downtown” another day. To us Europeans or Brits, Downtown is an area outside the City, in America Downtown is the City! We left Penn Station Newark and arrived at Penn Station NY! Confused? Yes, we were too!
Standing
opposite Macy’s store one day (the store takes up a whole block) Mike and David
negotiated a 3 day pass on a tourist bus, a brilliant idea when we realised how
BIG New York is!! We thought we would
just wander up to Central Park, head down to the financial district, sail down
the Hudson River or trot over Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn.
Yeah!! Right!! A block takes several minutes to walk and take into account stopping and turning to check out and watch every ambulance, fire engine and police car crawling past, getting neck ache from looking up at all the immensely tall buildings, and the sights, smells and sounds that invade and overload all the senses, walking just half a mile took well over an hour!!
The bus
ride took us one route “Uptown”, through the theatre district, up the edge of
Central Park, through the posh Washington Heights, through dodgy Harlem, and
back down Museum Mile, passing the American Guggenheim, Central Park zoo ,
Carnegie Hall and Times Square!
Route 2 was
“Downtown”, Times Square, Rockerfeller Centre, Macys, Empire State Building,
Flatiron Building, Soho, Little Italy, China Town, Canal Street, City Hall,
Garment District, Meat Packing District, Chelsea and the port of New York.
Route 3 was
a mix of the above plus areas like Upper West Side, the Bronx, East Harlem and
Midtown.
We crossed
the Hudson River one evening just as sun was setting, to tour around the Statue
of Liberty and saw New Jersey and Brooklyn in the background on the horizon.
We visited all the usual tourist buildings – we had to! We gawped at the size of Macy’s and Bloomingdales (didn’t actually have time to go into them), went up the viewing platform on floor 89 of the Empire State building, paid an emotional visit to the eerily quiet 9/11 monuments, went to Madison Square Gardens to see if anything was on (it wasn’t) and marveled at Broadway, attending a matinee showing of Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.
We saw some
very strange things – hot dog stalls on every street corner and steam vents in
the roads (as you see in the films), a group of about 150 stake boarders
snaking down a road on a Sunday morning, and every nationality you could ever
imagine wearing all sorts of different types and styles of clothes.
So how would I describe New York? Its clean, friendly, noisy, unruffled, happy, busy, easy going, beautiful, eerie, fashionable, structured, and amazing!!!
A regular monster truck!
Penn station, but which one??? It was Newark.
Downtown New York
David checking out the hard ware!
A traditional bus!!!
Penn Station New York!
Accosted by Batman!
Interior of Penn Station Newark
David & Mike supping on the Pier
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA as it’s known locally)
Waiting to see Phantom
Images from the top of the Empire State Building, approx. 4pm until sunset
Hudson River in the background
Statue of Liberty trip & other pics
Mike placing his order with the NYPD, a night in the cells!
The cast of Phantom of the Opera at their final curtain call.
A modern shopping centre.
By heck, it was freezing on the River Hudson!
Images from the 7/11 Monument
The new building.
Motor Town Detroit
What a different 2 hours makes in American weather! We flew to Detroit, a short 2 hour journey and arrived to sunshine and a bit of warmth. Our hotel was just outside town so we discovered the delights of UBER drivers over the next week.
Detroit is named “motor city” where car production and manufacture “made the city”. Ford, Chrysler, GMC, all started here but as production was killed off in the 1960s or 70s, the city took a huge downturn, became a bed of riots, rotting buildings, derelict factories, unemployment and dire living. The other thing Detroit was famous for, and this is what has helped the rebirth of Detroit, is Motown music, where Berry Gordy lived at the time, created a recording studio and where he created his empire of record labels that made people like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations famous.
Berry had worked on a production line at Ford, realised the advantages and benefits of well skilled, smart, organised teams and applied this method of working to his artistes. If anyone fell below his standards they didn’t make it. His first house, bought by him and turned into a recording studio, is now the Motown Museum, along with the neighbouring 8 houses with displays of personal items, his original apartment, musical instruments and memorabilia given to him by his stars.
We had a tour of the museum, which was fascinating. One afternoon we visited a house that Berry Gordy once owned for a private party. The house is now owned by a local paint artist who is trying to keep the house as original as possible, however he had covered over the swimming pool and put away all the antiques!
The Motown event was amazing, although I have to confess that I was born after most of the artistes sprung onto the scene! Every evening we were entertained with old Motown musicians, I will attach a copy of the event’s line up, easier than trying to remember them all!
We took
time out during the day to explore the city, we walked along the sea front and
looked over the river at Canada. We
visited an area in Downtown that is simply full of restaurants and casinos, we
spent an afternoon at a museum where the original Ford Models A to T were made,
before the production became too big for the building and they moved to a huge
premises out of town. Our guide was an
ex-Ford worker and very obviously took pride in still being involved. The collection of all working models from A
to T is the only one in the world. Note : they ALL run!! The museum is
sometimes used as a wedding venue, and was recently patronised by the current
Ford family, who held a wedding on the top floor.
Detroit is
an interesting city, being modernised and updated, with a large financial
section in the heart of the city, and everyone we met was pleasant, polite,
friendly, helpful and very interested in talking to us.
Because of the wedding itself, we felt like one big family, people came up to us to congratulate the bride and groom, people who turned out to be old Motown singers, or band players or someone who knew someone in a Motown band – the connections were there even down to an Uber driver we had one day who used to play in a supporting band!! We felt humbled by their pride in the improvements in their life and city, it was a relaxing, happy stay during our week in Detroit.
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