A Trip To The City

It’s not often you go on vacation to a place where not one but two local people ask why in the world did you come here?

Every year after tax season we head out on a short vacation to allow F to unwind from her long, grueling schedule and also to celebrate the end of another long, grueling winter.

This year, we – along with Kelsey, our daughter who also had endured a long, grueling tax season – considered several options. We thought about the beach, our usual destination, but by the time we made any decision it was too late to book anything. We considered New York City, but opted against it because we figured it was too late to book any Broadway shows we wanted to see. We considered the Caribbean, but we had been last fall and the Covid testing nightmare put us off. We thought about Hawaii – because why not – but didn’t want to be gone that long right now.

So we ended up in … 

Cincinnati.

I know, I know. Go ahead and laugh. It’s not exactly in anyone’s top 10 travel destination hot spots. But there are extenuating circumstances.

First, the plan was to spend a couple of days on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, sipping and sampling some tasty libations at various distilleries in northern Kentucky. Then we would head to nearby Cincinnati for a couple of days of chilling in a city. All of this is drivable – 6 plus hours from home – so no flying involved.

Living in a small town/rural area, we have plenty of nature and a bit of culture. So an urban experience is a nice change; we like being in cities but we don’t want to live in one. Hang out for a few days enjoying city life before sensory and people overload overwhelm us and we know it’s time to head home.

Also, I was born near Cincinnati and we had been there a couple of times, once on business and once to take the kids, and had a good time.

So, expert travel planners that we are, we waited until the week before we left to book some tours of the distilleries we wanted to see. The first couple of choices were booked – not just for the day we wanted but for the entire week and the week after that and the … you get the picture. The next couple we were interested in were also booked. The next … we gave up. 

Who knew distilleries were such a popular thing in the middle of April?

All right, no distillery tours. Do we still want to go just to Cincinnati? Well, if we couldn’t book a simple distillery tour, we probably weren’t going to be able to book anything other than a crappy condo in Gatlinburg at such a late date.

So off we went to Ohio, of all places. 

Once there, two people – a clerk in a store and a waitress in a restaurant – both looked incredulously at us when we told them we were there on vacation. “Why would you come here?” they both asked. Then, apparently realizing that they were dissing their own town, quickly added, not necessarily too convincingly, “not that there’s anything wrong with Cincinnati. In fact, there’s a lot of fun stuff to do.”

And, in reality, there is.

It’s a nice city. It has a big river, and we actually stayed on the Kentucky side so we could have a view of the river and the city skyline. We walked across a bridge to go to a big league baseball game featuring the team I grew up rooting for. (Okay, the Reds are so bad this year they may not actually qualify as major league.) So what if they lost? You’re watching baseball in a beautiful ballpark on a balmy Friday night with the Ohio River rolling along right outside. And then they had a fireworks show to top it off.

Most of downtown along the river is made up of parks and walkways and bike paths and plazas. Like many other cities now, Cincinnati has electric (and regular) bikes and scooters situated around town that you can rent through a phone app, unlock them and ride around, park them somewhere else and hop on another one. Very civilized. Ride along the river for a while, watch all the people out enjoying the fine, sunny 80-degree day, then stop and have a beer and an oversized pretzel at a sidewalk cafe (Cincinnati has a big German heritage).

Great restaurants, nice bars, a trip to the zoo, a ride on a riverboat, a pretty fabulous market with all kinds of food and quirky shops, another sporting event – a professional soccer game where the crowd was more passionate than at the baseball game – and a quick nostalgic side trip to my old hometown and the house we used to live in all those many years ago. 

So, yes, we definitely know how to have fun. Even in a place like Cincinnati.

But don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.