Mansions and Lights

Last Saturday was our first full day in Louisville, and my goodness! Did we ever pack in a lot of adventure. After sleeping twelve full hours, we decided we were still stuffed from dinner the night before, so we didn't need breakfast. We took our time getting ready, and late morning, we headed out for Bardstown, on the southern edge of Louisville, so we could see this historic mansion they have.

It was pouring when we left...the kind of rain that makes it impossible to hear inside a car and probably nearly as impossible to drive. I wouldn't know. I was busy with a story we'll tell you about on the podcast...called Bekah and the Smoke Alarms. It's a story you won't even believe when you hear it.

Our first stop was at a little pizza place, where we had lunch - and it was delicious. But then we wanted to visit this mansion called My Old Kentucky Home. It was all decorated for Christmas, and guess what? No photography policy. #facepalm. But we did get this lovely photo OUTSIDE with it.

Our tour guide was amazing. He was knowledgeable and interesting. (That's a hard combo to find.) He even sang a song to us! The house was beautiful, and the Christmas décor, though simple, was really pretty. (Each room featured décor from different eras.)

Our favorite thing from the house was the upholstered chair in the bedroom that doubled as a chamber pot. (Yes, we are overgrown toddlers.)

The house, he said, has electricity, heat, air, and even WiFi, but still no indoor plumbing.

So there's this:

We really enjoyed the tour (despite the lack of pictures).

Our only other plan for the day was to visit Lights Under Louisville, and our timing turned out so that we could go right when it opened. My GOODNESS. Am I ever glad we did that!

So, Lights Under Louisville is a light display similar to what you'd find in a park...but it's in caverns underground. Yes! You drive through caves to look at lights!! How cool is that!

Cool, yes. Cheap, not so much. It was $27 for our car (more for larger vehicles), but listen to this. When you go to the caverns, they have two huge parking lots they use as "holding tanks" for vehicles so they can dismiss them slowly into the caverns. We arrived early enough that we got to bypass the first holding tank and the second one was only half full when we arrived. We waited 45 minutes there to get down into the caverns, and when we came out, BOTH holding tank lots were full and the line to enter the area was a couple of miles down the road. I read on a review that some people have waited 4 hours to get in. (You have to sit in your car that whole time, so you better hope you like your car!)

So the bottom line is it's very cool, but GO EARLY!!!

Want to see some of our pictures?

This was from the entrance:

I was telling some of my friends about this stop, and they were a little scared of the cave idea. I don't love tight spaces, and I was fine. The lanes were wide, the ceilings were high, and it felt very spacious. Yes, it was dark, but it just felt like nighttime dark, not like panic-dark. It was worth it to me to pay the money we paid and wait the amount of time we did to enjoy the light displays. (I don't think I would have done well waiting 4 hours.) They were good about keeping the traffic moving in the cave. (A little too good at times. We paused for a photo and got scolded for holding up the line.)

On our way home, we stopped at Zaxby's for salads, took them back to our Airbnb, and had dinner while we watched more movies!!

We were pretty excited to have had such a great day despite some pretty lousy weather - and the whole debacle we'll tell you about on the podcast!