Journey to the land of Bourbon Pt.II

One of the draws of the trip was getting to explore Louisville, a city none of us really had any ideas about what it was like. We arrived Friday evening in time to take in the Gallery Crawl they have down town, so we walked down the main drag toward one of the places we had found online and were very excited about. The 21st Century Museum Hotel is a large old office building in the middle of downtown that now houses, not only a hotel but a bar and restaurant called Proof and a large gallery space that holds the owners lard modern art collection as well as hosting traveling exhibits and local art works. As we got close we could see a 20ft tall gold painted replica of Michelangelo's "David", and we knew we had found our spot. We made our way in and to a table in the bar side of the restaurant  ordered a round of drinks and appetizers  and tried to take in all of the art that was right there in the bar. Or favorite being a representation of the Satyr Pan in life size bronze as if he were a bartender serving drinks. All of the food and drinks were very well executed and the fact that they would make a sidecar with my preferred proportions, without really raising an eyebrow, was quite comforting. From there we moved into the gallery space where they were having an opening for a new set of works; some being rotated in from the collection, others by local artists who were on premises for the event. I am not always the biggest fan of modern art but there were some really great pieces from around the world and while not all of them were the most competently accomplished technically were still quite thought provoking. From there we wandered down the street and took in more of the awesome public art before stopping for a bite that isn't really worth spending time on and then, finding our way back to the hotel, crashed out for the night.

The next day we found ourselves beating a path to breakfast that took a rather circuitous route, due to my crappy memory, was it N. 6th street or S. 6th street? But we eventually found our destination, Toast, for an awesome breakfast cocktail and superb comfort breakfast. The star of this meal was the lemon chiffon pancakes ordered by The Mrs. after breakfast we walked back across the street to a shit shop that we had spotted but had been closed on our way to breakfast. This place was crazy, four or five floors of what looked to have been an old school building filled with every bit of crap you could imagine. Tons of furniture, toy collectibles, collectible liquor bottles, architectural stuff; we even found etched photo plates, it was amazing. We spent way too much time there and ended up having to forgo the trip to the Speed Art Museum and skipped to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Yes, where they make baseball bats.

I'm not much of a baseball fan these days, but I am a cabinet maker so I was interested in that aspect of it. We got there just in time for the architectural tour of the facility, which was pretty cool, and then went in for the main factory tour. That is quite a place, they still do some of the old school production but mostly it's done on CNC machines. You wouldn't believe how many suckers will pay 7 bucks to watch people make bats. They had us crammed in there like we were gonna catch a bolt in the forehead at the end. All in all an enjoyable day.

After the tour we walked back to the hotel for a little rest, knowing there would be some more serious eating and drinking in a couple of hours.