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Sunday, August 2, 2015

Batter Up!

If you ever stay at The Brown Hotel, I recommend you spend a bit more and stay in a Club Level room. This allows you use of the Club Room for breakfast in the morning and in the evening beer, wine and hors d'sources (didn't look it up, his how's my spelling?). Very relaxing and great chance to meet folks from around the country.

From the Club Room on Saturday morning we put on our walking shoes and headed towards the Ohio River, which is parallel by Main Street in downtown Louisville. The walk took us past some great older buildingsand it was very clean, though pretty empty at 10ish.

Turning west on Main we arrived at our destination about a mile from our hotel. (Sidebar, seems all of our walks on this trip have been about a mile, though unlike Nashville, Louisville is pretty flat. End sidebar.)

The Hillerich & Bradsby factory and museum.

Baseball fans know this is the home of the famed Louisville Slugger bat manufacturer, the preferred bat of many major league players for close to one hundred years.

Fantastic place, almost like the Baseball Hall of Fame. The short tour showed how bats used to be made and how they are made today. While place smelled like sawdust, which I liked. One of my favorite things was the wall that was covered with the signatures, burned into wood just like on the bats, of every major leaguer who has had a signature Louisville Slugger (below my Dad's hero and one of mine). 

 Whether you are a baseball fan or not I recommend a cost.

A few blocks to the east of the bat factory and museum is the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience. Heaven Hill, owner of the Evan Williams brand, has built a Disney like tour using interactive videos and short tour to give the history of Evan Williams, first licensed distiller in Kentucky, which was pretty good. The pay off is the small tasting at the end where we received three samples, about one-quarter ounce each. Of the three we sampled one, the Evan Williams biggest brand, was not good, one, the single barrel was pretty good, and the third, Larceny was okay--not great--to my tastes.

Hoofing back to the hotel we stopped for some lunch (soup and salad, because my sister likes to know). We relaxed in the room and plotted our stategery for the Bourbon Trail and dinner options. 

One more cocktail in the bar eavesdropping on the many different wedding parties starting at The Brown, then up to the Club Room for some bites and beer for me and wine for Leslie refreshed.

We got the car out of the garage with the intent to head up river to eat at a fish type place on a creek that does into the Ohio. On our way up the interstate going along the river we saw Louisville Slugger Field and a game was in progress. We quickly pulled off the freeway and found out way into the park where the Louisville Bats were hosting the Toledo Mudhens (M*A*S*H fans will recall that the Mudhens are the team of Col Klinger).

I had the bologna stack (Bologna cooked on the grill with grilled onions on white bread), growing up on fried and barbecued Bolognese I couldn't pass it up. Leslie had a really good hot dog. A few beers, a beautiful night, and the Bats win a well pitched game 1-0.

A night cap in the bar with a piece of the famous Derby Pie and our day was full and complete.

Sunday we see Churchill Downs and start bourbon tasting in earnest.



The huge bat outside Louisville Slugger 

 My hero growing up


 Dad's hero


Along Main Street the Walk of Fame, bat and engraved
home plate of many proficient players who used Louisville Sluggers

Our tasting flight at Evan Williams


A great night at the ballpark



I just like how the flag is backlit, 
bridge over Ohio River to Indiana in background



Derby Pie



The Brown Hotel is very old, lobby phone




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