a small city with soul and a pulse

Louisville surprises. When you approach it on the highway, the most vivid sight - and the one you would remember if you simply drove right by - is the KFC (Yum!) Center, a new and flashy sports arena that could be in any city anywhere in the USA. But you would be making a mistake if you let "the Yum" as they call it be your only image of the city because if you were to exit into the downtown, you would find an interesting mix: a Victorian center where despite the fact that the buildings have been beautifully preserved, their street level stores are mostly empty - vacated by businesses which now prosper in malls on the outskirts of the city; a metropolis pretty much devoid of public transportation but with very cool and edgy sidewalk sculptures that serve as bike racks for the increasing number of cyclists; acres of desolate and empty urban landscape surrounding pockets of beautiful mansions and small village-like areas where indie bookstores fly rainbow flags and shotgun houses have been turned into restaurants and boutiques; and there are even two city parks in Louisville designed by Olmstead. Because our daughter is living here at the moment, working at the extraordinary Actor's Theater of Louisville, she is something of an insider. So in scouting for a hotel that would accept both us and our doggie for the Christmas weekend, she found 21C - a chic, modern and, let's face it, luxurious hotel whose rooftop is lined year round with red penguin sculptures. The lobby of 21C is a fantastic modern art museum and the mens room is something of a design legend involving a waterfall and a one way mirror!

Perhaps the essence of Louisville showed itself best last night when we went to the Garage Bar for Christmas Eve dinner. Having walked all afternoon, we decided to take a taxi to the restaurant which is, as its name suggests, an old gas station out on one of the highways that cuts across the city. The driver chatted with us of course (this is Louisville, afterall) and we discovered that we all shared the same last name, though no relation that we could discover. Then dinner at the bar - local ingredients, microbrews, a variety of bourbons - and late in the evening we asked our adorable young waiter if he could call a cab for us, since we were a long and desolate walk from our hotel. There were no cabs late on Christmas Eve, so our waiter said "my car's out front - I'll drive you back" and off we all went through the silent streets of a most appealing city.