we are from a small town where there isn't much to do. when we do want to do something big/fun than just do a movie and eat dinner, we have to drive. the closest city that is worth mentioning is 2 hours away. so, we're very used to having to travel to do stuff. so, when i say i want to travel once a month, what i mean by that is that we can take small weekend trips to cities/towns close to our area and explore something new.
not only does this plan feed my travel addiction. but, it also gives us an opportunity to try something new together, to fall in love all over again and to get ourselves out of our comfort zone. so, i'm very passionate about making this a habit.
just a little background before we get in to this distillery trip.. matt and i both grew up in this town and both our parents always took us to myrtle beach. every. single. summer. and not knocking myrtle beach. i actually enjoy it. and going there so much in my childhood it's almost an extended vacationy home. however, after graduating high school, i declared i wasn't going to travel with mom and dad to myrtle anymore but i was going to explore the world with my friends. since then, i have seen hawaii, costa rica, mississippi, chicago, nyc, las vegas, multiple places in florida, a handful of cruises and many other stops in between. but matt didn't get the opportunity to travel as much after high school and so most of his travel experience is myrtle and st louis where his chiropractic school is. so, matt hasn't really been bitten by the travel bug as much as i have. but when we got together, i told him of my travels and my desires to see even more than what i have seen so far and he seems to be on board to conquer this planet with me. win!
and now that we have a good comfortable flow of income coming into the household we decided our first official travel trip would be to a distillery in kentucky. matt is a bourbon/whiskey kind of man and i am more of a fruity-don't want to taste the alcohol at all- kind of girl. so, i wasn't too excited about the tasting part of the tour. but i was pretty pumped about seeing how they make it and learning the history! ((nerd alert))
we chose to do woodford reserve distillery which is located near lexington, ky. we stayed in downtown lexington at the 21c museum hotel. (i highly recommend it!) but unfortunately, i didn't get any good pictures to post. wahhh. but it's fabulous and it's in a few different cities around the usa - so definitely check it out if you can! it's more of an artsy hotel. on the 1st two floors of the hotel is a museum. so, you can walk around those floors and see art. (so cool!) and in your room will be some kind of art. in ours, we only had a collection of photos of a flying eagle. but we got the cheapest room they offer so i'm not sure if the more expensive rooms had more art than just one. however, the bed was so comfortable and the bathroom is to die for! like can they come and do a bathroom redo at my house??? no? maybe? seriously, check out this hotel and stay for at least one night in the cheapest room they have. it will be an awesome experience!
our hotel was located downtown. and it was st patrick's day weekend. there was a st patrick's day festival going on right outside our hotel. so, matt and i walked down there and checked it out. we easily walked to a couple restaurants that were pretty amazing and worth looking in to if you're ever in lexington.
because we do it big when we travel (who are we?? we're so rich..), we ate appetizers at table three ten. the cool thing about this place is that the store front is all windows that they completely open up so it's almost like you're eating on the sidewalk. our table was next to these windows and it was really neat to still be a part of city but be inside a restaurant. we got some fancy cocktails and ordered the cheese platter. it was fantastic. they offer real meals and it's more of a local grown restaurant which is great that they are supporting local farmers. it's a little pricey but really worth the experience and the food is amazing.
for dinner, we ate at dudley's on short. when you first walk in, there's a bar area where you can eat at some tables or drink at the bar. then off to the side is a more formal dining area. we obviously ate in the formal dining room (since we're so fabulous) and the food was to die for. i ordered the tournedos maxwell. apparently it was featured on the food network. matt ordered the tasting of duck. and we both licked the plate clean. in the summertime they have a bar on the roof and you can go up there and lounge and drink. unfortunately, it wasn't open for us to hang out but we were able to walk up there and see it. i would love to venture back to lexington in the summer just for the food and the opportunity to get drinks on the rooftop.
we only stayed in lexington for one night. so we left the next morning. before we left, we ate breakfast at doodles. i wasn't too pleased with my experience here. it was confusing since we never ate there before and maybe there was signage but i didn't see it. buuuuut, basically you go to the counter and order what you would like to eat and then they tell you where to sit. and there's a high possibility that you will be seated with strangers. the restaurant is very small. and it was really annoying to me that you basically had to wait on yourself. and when i say that i mean if i ordered a pop (hello ohio verbage!) or coffee, you had to go to the other side of the restaurant and pour it yourself. now, i say this place is tiny. people are every where. i'm not big on trying to get through all these people and take care of myself. the only thing that the 'waiter' brought to your table was your plate of food. if i wanted a box, i had to get up go across the restaurant and get it myself. the food was OK. but the taking care of myself i wasn't a fan. and i made a fool of myself by seating myself before the counter lady told me where to go. (hello embarrassment) i would have rather gone to waffle house and had a better waffle than what i got there...
so you've probably read like 14 pages worth of crap about the food and the hotel and you're like 'staci, we came here for bourbon' i know, i know. i'm getting there.
finally, we started the trip off by going straight to the distillery. it was a beautiful warm day in march and we enjoyed the winding road we had to take to get there. beautiful scenery, horse farms and old looking houses. we arrived and paid $10/person for our tour. they take so many people i believe every 15 minutes. so, lucky for us we had a few minutes to waste and we got try their honey bourbon ice cream. yum! when it was our tour time, they gave us headphones and we took off to see where they make it, store it and finally got to taste it. we learned great history of why bourbon is made in kentucky (the natural limestone in the water), we learned that most of buildings on the property were built back in the 1800's out of that limestone and we learned that our dream job would be a master distiller. well, maybe matt's dream job. it was fun and fascinating and matt's favorite part was the tasting at the end. mostly because he got to taste mine too. (yuck) oh, and they give you chocolate. so, that's a plus, right? here's some decent shots i got on my iphone during the tour.
now, go pour you a glass and act like that sophisticated bourbon drinker that you are!
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