Day Trip to Nashville!
Must-see attractions for a quick road trip to Nashville
Nashville is an easy day trip from most any corner of Kentucky. Six hours from the farthest corners of Eastern Kentucky and less than three from most parts of the Commonweath, Nashville offers a unique brand of glitz and Southern hospitality. My beau and I have been known to head down to NashVegas for the day to take in a quick appointment or a bite of hot chicken!
Nashville-style hot chicken
Where to stay:
The Hermitage Hotel, located in the heart of Downtown, is one of my very favorite places to stay. The rooms are luxurious (the bathrooms are huge and outright decadent!), and you'll be within walking distance of anything you could hope to visit.
Where to go:
No trip to Nashville is complete without a visit to Broadway. The Ryman Auditorium, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Hatch Show Print, and the Ernest Tubb Record Shop are must-sees for music fans.
Provence
Where to get breakfast:
Nashville is home to my very favorite breakfast spots in the world. The Loveless Cafe has the best biscuits and hash brown casserole you'll ever eat. The Pancake Pantry makes these sweet potato pancakes that are simply amazing. And the Donut Den serves apple fritters that you'll actually dream about. (Don't forget to stop by the Colbert-famous Parnassus Books in the same shopping center as Donut Den!)
Image via Spirit of Nashville
What to do:
Whether your day trip includes an event at Vanderbilt or LP Field, a shopping trip to the Green Hills Mall and the West End boutiques, or a show at the Bridgestone Arena, there's always something to do in Nashville!
Hattie B's Hot Chicken
What to eat:
I recommend a trip to the funky 12 South neighborhood for Brooklyn-style pizza at Mafiaoza's and gourmet popsicles at Las Paletas for a low-key dinner. Other must-visits are Provence Breads & Cafe (pick up some Dancing Goats coffee beans for the road), Noshville Deli(Order the Silver Dollar Potato Cakes), Bread & Company, (You can bring me a gallon or two of fruit tea, please!), and Hattie B's Hot Chicken!
Nashville is one of my very favorite cities. I love that there's always something to do. I adore that you may just see a celeb in the mall or at the next table, and that nobody makes a thing of it. The country-club-meets-honkytonk vibe is fun and original. I can't wait to take my next road trip there!
Day Trip to Memphis!
Top five attractions for a quick trip to Memphis
Memphis is just a short drive from most cities in Kentucky. You can be there in anywhere from 1-6 hours time from the Bluegrass State.
Take it from this Kentucky girl living in Memphis, these are the Top Five places you must experience!
1. Graceland- This one is a given. Graceland is such an experience and definitely plan a whole day (or half) for the full Graceland tour!
2. Civil Rights Museum- This Memphis tourist attraction is a must-see! Again, plan a few hours for this historical museum, located partially inside the famous Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated
3. Peabody Hotel- this hotel is a Memphis landmark. Go during the duck march and see the ducks switch shifts at the duck fountain!
4. Central BBQ- this is my personal Memphis BBQ favorite. A lot of people will tell you to go to Rendezvous, and while it's a great experience, Central BBQ (with three locations in the Memphis metro area!) gets my vote for the tastiest pig.
5) Gus's Fried Chicken- get yourself some authentic southern cooking at Gus's Fried Chicken.
Hope to see y'all in Memphis soon!
Top Five Day Trips from Paducah!
Five fun day trips near the Paducah, KY area.
Paducah is at the center of it all. You just didn't know it.
We sit at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. We are mere miles away from Kentucky Lake and 15 minutes from Illinois. In fact, a two-hour drive can get you to five—count 'em FIVE—states. Sure, we don't have the ocean but who needs it when Superman lives just over the bridge!
So, I'm going to cheat just a bit and break down the Top 5 categories of day trips, instead of specific locations.
The City Museum. Image via Delta Sky Magazine.
1. Big Cities.
Nashville and St. Louis are easy day trips for families aching to get out of town and stare at some skyscrapers. Both cities are great destinations for kids. Nashville has an amazing zoo, and St. Louis's City Museum, which describes itself as an "eclectic mixture of children's playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel," is one of the best, most unique children's attractions in the nation.
Mammoth Cave. Image via National Geographic.
2. Outdoor Recreation.
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is only about thirty minutes away and boasts miles of hiking, camping, and fishing area. Above ground recreation isn't your thing? Kentucky also has the world's largest known cave system - appropriately called Mammoth Cave. The Shawnee National Forest and Garden of the Gods are also less than an hour away.
3. Roadside Attractions.
Y'all, Superman is totally my neighbor. Metropolis, IL, is only about 15 minutes away and the Superman statue alone is worth a visit. Up for other wacky locales? How about where Corvettes are made? You could even go to Paris...
4. Cultural Experiences.
Kentucky has one of the fastest growing Amish populations in the nation. Seeing the horse and buggies never gets old. Neither does their amazing food or craftsmanship.
5. History at your back door.
Some of the most famous names in American history lived and died in this area. From Abraham Lincoln to Davy Crockett, this area was the wild, wild west for a significant portion of our country's history and has plenty of amazing stories to tell.
~ Sarah Stewart Holland
Day Trip To Jim Beam American Stillhouse
Jim Beam's American Stillhouse is a fantastic place to play Kentucky Hometown Tourist!
Yesterday, I attended a lunch and tour at the Jim Beam American Stillhouse. I figured it would be a fun working lunch where I had the opportunity to learn a little more about the production of Kentucky bourbon whiskey. I was pleasantly surprised to feel like I'd taken a mini-staycation quite close to home!
The Jim Beam Stillhouse is located in Clermont, just outside Shepherdsville. It's really hard to believe that such a gorgeous landscape is only two miles off I-65! It only took me about 25 minutes to get there from Louisville's East End!
The tour takes you through the entire process of bourbon production -- from grain to bottle. No matter how many distilleries I visit, I'm always fascinated by the idea that a handful of basic grains can be transformed into so many different flavor profiles!
The Beam tour is firmly rooted in the history of both the company and the founding Beam family. I even had the opportunity to chat with Fred Noe, Jim Beam's great-grandson, who had some hilarious and larger-than-life stories to tell!
Barrel head from the very first barrel of Jim Beam bourbon
Bourbon warehouses are always a fascinating visit. Here, we learned that the iconic Jim Beam white label -- the world's most popular bourbon -- is produced in such volume that the distillers don't rotate the barrels for climate control, opting instead to create each batch from a cross-section of barrels that have been stored in different areas of the warehouse.
The tour also includes a trip to the bottling line. Here, the single-barrel bourbon Knob Creek is being bottled. (Fun fact: before the bottles are filled, they are washed out with "leftover" bourbon!)
One of the tour's most fascinating sights is this liquor cabinet, where two bottles from each batch are held back for control purposes. After two years, these bottles will be given to Beam employees.
Of course, no tour is complete without a little taste! I sampled two of my favorite craft bourbons from the Beam line, Basil Hayden's (clean, soft, and complex) and Booker's (big, spicy, and robust).
This was perhaps my favorite view of the day: one of Mr Beam's original warehouses nestled between a Baptist church and a graveyard. It seemed so iconic of Kentucky ideology!
The tour was incredible, the food and bourbon were fantastic, and the Beam staff were so, so friendly. They really did live up to the distillery's motto: "Enter as friends, leave as family!" Thanks so much to Jim Beam Stillhouse for inviting me out to dinner; I hope to see y'all again soon!
If you're looking for a fun day trip to learn a little more about Kentucky bourbon while enjoying a gorgeous landscape, you should take some time to play Hometown Tourist at the Jim Beam American Stillhouse!