Candlewood Suites Clarksville

... the trams around the city.

Monday - day trip to Sintra

Tuesday - roam around the city some more then fly to Terceira, Azores (4 hours ahead of Louisville time).

I'll be in the Azores from 9/8 through 9/17 for work. Only thing on the agenda (other than my pesky job) for right now is a half day whale watching tour on ...

A short walk from the hotel lead us to the Louisville Convention Center and my first Kentucky Starbucks. I made it a mocha since it doubled as my breakfast. I asked the barista if they carried city mugs and he replied with a slight southern tang, "Nope. Small market."

Right.

... Caddy.

We then ventured over to the "hip side of town" and visited Lynn's Paradise Cafe. A busy destination spot, to be sure, but Lynn's was well worth the wait. It's tacky and eclectic and the wait staff are Kentucky's finest punk hippy kids--in short: awesome with veggie options. I had the vegetarian biscuits and gravy and my first ever plate of fried green tomatoes.

... as that's all i plan on taking aside from my laptop/electronic backpack...Chad in general is anxious and nervous...kind of endearing...he's never been out of the country (not even Mexico and Canada, which in my book don't count anyway)...watching his eyes open to the world...the varying languages, cultures, real European food and the history or art is what I think will be most entertaining this time around....though ...

... be the next year the Blue Angels make an appearance. Another cool thing the pilots do in the air show is take the helicopters and weave them through the bridges and get close to the crowd (but not scary close!) and if it's hot and you are close enough to the river you can get a nice cooling spray from the river as the helicopter pass by.

Once 9:30 PM hits, the show begins. Like clockwork. The bridge seems to explode...but it's just the fire works. :D And it's not only the bridge ...

... snakey kind of river. We could catch glimpses of houses built on the sides of the mountains surrounding Charleston and some of them looked very plantation like with the big pillars in front. Those house must have a spectacular view!

At Charleston we decided to change our route and headed through Kentucky rather than Ohio. I love driving through Kentucky. It is such a beautiful state and our other choice was Ohio which tends to be so much ...

Oh the wonders of nature and nature-stream restoration projects I volunteer on. Bernheim offers an abundance of programs for schools and families that educate and allow you to help conserve some nature!

Also, this park has many, many hiking trails. Yay hiking! We all know how much I love that. :)

Louisville is best done at night. Our night life is no Vegas. But it is pretty good.

The places featured in the album:

4th Street Live: A clubbing hot spot. But only if you're 21+. Still pretty fun with all of the restaurants and shopping.

Cafe 360: The local hookah bar. It has a wide variety of food on its menu. It's open 24 hours, 7 ...

... Lincoln Tomb. The unit is a Civil War (1862) Union regiment that was reactivated in 1969 for the purpose of serving the country as a patriotic organization, which has been serving continuously for 40 years.

Wednesday, we traveled through more corn and heavy traffic on lousy roads to Louisville, where we stopped for the night. We have observed several of the Economic Stimulus roadwork signs along ...

... sort of a deal. Being young and daring and probably more than a bit stupid, my friends and I were determined to rack down all manner of specters and haints and devil worshipers and...well, I don't rightly know, exactly. That's where the whole plan sort of got derailed. Kind of look at them for a spell, I reckon. Maybe throw some hedge apples at them then take off on our Huffys while praying that we wouldn't be awakened the next night by half-hearted chanting and an assembly of black ...