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www.gotolouisville.com

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TRIP

63 Kentucky Bluegrass & Horse Country opposite

65 My Old Kentucky Home

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TRIP 63

Kentucky Bluegrass & Horse Country

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WHY GO A trip through the sunlight-dappled hills and meadows of Bluegrass Country is like a massage for your tired brain. Drive the scenic byways from Louisville to Lexington and beyond, stopping to tour storybook-like country estates, ride horses through the poplar forests and sip the region’s famous bourbon.

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TIME

3 days

DISTANCE

140 miles

BEST TIME TO GO

Apr - Sep

START

Louisville, KY

END

Harrodsbug, KY

ALSO GOOD FOR

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Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region encompasses the north-central part of the state, including the cities of Lexington, Frankfort and Louisville, and is home to half the state’s population. Though Lexington is the capital of Horse Country, cheerful, solid Louisville has the racing world’s most iconic building: the white spires of Churchill Downs. The Run for the Roses, as the Kentucky Derby is known, happens here on the first Saturday in May. Though most seats are reserved years in advance, if you’re around on Derby Day you can pay $40 to get into the Paddock area, though don’t expect to see much. But from April through November you can get ultra-cheap seats for warm-up races and simulcasts of racing events worldwide.

Wander over to the riverfront downtown, with its well-preserved 19th-century brick buildings. Have a mint julep while listening to live piano music in the Lobby Bar of the gilded Brown Hotel, where starlets and ambassadors got up to no good during the Roaring Twenties. Clear your head with a stroll around the Old Louisville neighborhood south of downtown, with America’s largest collection of Victorian homes.

Head out of Louisville and into the Arcadian countryside, where - sorry to disappoint - but the grass is not actually blue. Poa pratensis, or Kentucky Bluegrass, gets its name from the bluish-purple buds it sprouts in early summer which, from a distance, can give fields of the grass a slightly sapphire cast.

About an hour east of Louisville is Kentucky’s tiny capital, Frankfort. This well-tended bluffside city has a gracious, all-American downtown - good for a leg-stretching stroll. A scenic overlook on Hwy 60 offers a sweeping view over the capital buildings, a popular photo op. Stay the night at the Meeting House, a 168-year-old Federal-style mansion in the historic district. Have a tall glass of tea on the verandah and sleep in one of four bedrooms, each decorated with quirky, hand-picked antiques.

The next day, have a decadent lunch near the village of Midway, at the Holly Hill Inn. This winsome 1845 Greek Revival estate, nestled beneath the oaks, houses one of the best restaurants in Kentucky. The married chef-owners serve a simple but elegant multi-course feast of handmade pastas, locally-raised meats and farmstead cheeses. Diminutive Midway is the state’s first railroad town and home to Kentucky’s only all-female college, Midway College.

Drive the scenic oak-lined Old Frankfort Pike into stately Lexington, once known as the “Athens of the West” for its architecture and culture. The area surrounding Lexington, known as the Inner Bluegrass (or Horse Country), has been a center of horse breeding for three centuries. The region’s ancient limestone deposits are natural fertilizers, feeding the lush meadows that in turn nourish grazing thoroughbreds.

Outside the city is the 1200-acre Kentucky Horse Park, an equine theme park and sports center. The park is home to about 50 different horse breeds, from the Akhal-Teke to the Welch Cob. Catch the daily Parade of Breeds or, in springtime, watch mares and new foals nuzzle in the paddock. The park’s Museum of the Horse has life-sized displays on horses through history, from the dog-sized prehistoric eohippus to modern polo ponies. Here you learn just how deep the human-horse