Tag: Kentucky

On an unseasonably cool day, my teenage son and I make the short drive from our home in Lexington to nearby Versailles. Our mission: explore scenic vistas via pedal-powered railbikes at Rail Explorers Bluegrass Kentucky Division, an outing I’d had on my radar since its opening in 2023.

Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, designer Albert Lukonga arrived in Lexington nearly two decades ago via a United Nations resettlement program. Now, he’s the man behind some of the city’s sharpest suits and sleekest silhouettes, dressing travelers from all corners of the globe on their way to the state’s prominent horse-racing venues. Here’s how the tastemaker would spend his ideal day out and about in the Horse Capital of the World.

With its modern facade, chic interior design, sexy speakeasy, and high-end surf and turf restaurant, it’s hard to believe that the building housing the Trail Hotel was once a Holiday Inn.

Highly walkable and populated with restaurants, galleries, and museums, Paducah’s verve far exceeds the sum of its relatively small population. Today, the town is home to not only world-renowned quilters, but also James Beard–nominated chefs, visual artists of nearly every medium, and a tight-knit community supporting them.

Its days as a bustling manufacturing center and riverboat port still echo through Covington, which was incorporated in 1815 where the Licking River flows into the Ohio. Connected to Cincinnati by the picturesque Roebling Suspension Bridge—a prototype for its more famous counterpart in Brooklyn—the city’s downtown includes a vibrant mashup of restaurants and shops where decades-old, family-owned hardware and sporting goods stores sit alongside lavish boutique hotels and trendy wine and bourbon bars.

Since opening in 1905, Louisville’s Seelbach Hilton has been a gathering spot for everyone from the cultured elite to gangsters, including Al Capone, who frequented the property during its Prohibition speakeasy heyday (allegedly coming and going through underground tunnels). If stepping inside the ornate lobby feels a bit like walking into a novel, there’s good reason: The site helped inspire F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 work The Great Gatsby, a bragging right Louisville will celebrate with a series of centennial events this spring.

We’re more than a hundred feet under Beckley, West Virginia, when the lights go out. One minute, I’m scanning the roof bolts and support timbers above my head, and then, with a thunk, there’s just . . . nothing. Nothing but the faint drip of water down the rock walls. Gerald Lucas asks me to put my hand out. I can’t see it, or him. It’s only 58 degrees—the temperature underground is constant all year—but I shiver a little. Oblivion is disorienting.

a writing assignment about silent travel has brought me to a Trappist monastery in rural Kentucky for a week. You don’t have to be Catholic to stay here (I am not), but you do have to be totally quiet. Trappist monks live much of their lives without speaking, as a form of contemplative prayer and a means for tuning their senses to God. Retreatants are invited to experience this way of life—and refrain from imposing the opposite. For me, this doesn’t just mean not talking to anyone here; it also includes turning off all technology, all week long.

Set in the rolling hills of Goshen, Kentucky, Hermitage Farm is a historic property and inn that raises champion thoroughbreds and celebrates the area’s agricultural legacy with bourbon tastings and farm-to-table dining. At the property’s Barn8 restaurant, bartender and Kentucky native Zack Staten uses craft bourbons in seasonal cocktails like the Bourbon, Beets, Battlestar Galactica, a fall menu favorite.

On the 25th anniversary of Kentucky's bourbon trail—and the 150th anniversary of the Kentucky Derby—a writer and his expat cousin rediscover the city.