Well, I’m back safely, sleep-deprived and satisfied from a girls’ weekend in Louisville!
I’m not exaggerating (much) on the sleep-deprivation part, by the way. I would estimate that I got a total of 7-8 hours between both nights of our trip, and not even because we were going to bed that late – although the bars were open until 4am, so that didn’t help. Nope, the reason I got such little sleep is due to being a naturally light-sleeper, and the fact that the blinds in our room did a very poor job of blocking out sunlight…bad combo! Basically: when the sun was up, I was up, whether I wanted to be or not. That makes it all the more surprising that I made it through this weekend, because our activities consisted of:
– Walking around the area near our AirBnB in 90-degree heat to find some cool murals, instead of just taking one of our cars there. Oops.
– Dancing all night on Friday (in heels)
– A relatively early brunch on Saturday
– An all-day festival called Forecastle – also on Saturday – which we got into by a stroke of luck (more on that below)
– An impromptu hour-long trip to and from Target before said festival, to find the right pair of plain sandals to wear…because one of us didn’t bring any shoes that could afford to be messed up, and the new shoes needed to match her outfit – I’ll just let you guess who that was.
– More dancing all night on Saturday (again, in heels)
– Visiting Churchill Downs on Sunday before our departure, and doing a walking tour in blazing sunlight with no shade (not our best idea)
Now perhaps you can see why there was no way this recap was happening yesterday. It was a very active weekend, and after a full day of work yesterday I just needed another night of sleep to be able to write coherently. But now that you have the gist of what we did over the course of those 2.5 days, time to dive into the details of the more…interestingparts of our trip.
First, our AirBnB: that “roommate” we thought we would have, due to my botched planning? Didn’t see him the entireweekend. As a reminder, our actual (absent that weekend) host mentioned that this roommate would arrive around 6:30pm on our very first night…clearly, that was not the case. Despite this fact, my friend swears that she heard movement downstairs in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Yet, when we got up a few hours later, there was still no sign of anyone else being in the house. Discovering this, we gave each other a look that can only be described as “NOPE”, and – for reasons you can interpret yourself – we chose not to discuss this again until we checked out on Sunday.
Moving on!
The highlight of our weekend was by far the last-minute decision to go to the Forecastle music festival – for free. How did we manage this? So glad you asked yourself that, while reading this post on your phone or desktop. On Friday, as we were wrapping up our first night out, we happened to chat and become friends with someone who was working a booth at the festival on Saturday, to promote his business. I won’t get into the minutia of how he was able to get us into the festival – and for the sake of his privacy in this situation, I unfortunately can’t post the link to his website – but all you need to know is that we waltzed in and got to enjoy multiple stages of music for the rest of the day. No complaints here. We found the stage that was shaded by an overpass, and it just so happened to be where Cashmere Cat played later that afternoon…all in all, not a bad way to spend our day.
Our last night in Louisville ended with us dancing onstage at a place called Z Bar, next to the DJ booth, where the male music duo “Glitter Tits” (lovely name, boys) played a set later that night. Pair that experience with laser lights, a fog machine, and non-stop pulsing music, and that explains why my entire body hurt the next day. I’m not proud to admit this, but my neck was sore from whipping my hair back and forth too aggressively throughout the night. Willow would be so proud.
So, that just about sums up the most notable aspects of our short trip. The only other thing that’s notable – to me – would be that all I wanted to see at Churchill Downs was their miniature pony named Winston (clever)…but Winston was not in the mood for the heat that day, and refused to come out of his stable – or even lift his head so I could see his cute miniature face. Rude, Winston!
Would you believe that, despite all of the above, I already want to hit the road again? At the moment, my next big trip isn’t until September, when I go to both Las Vegas and Los Angeles…but I wouldn’t be surprised if I manage to squeeze in another small trip before then, to tide me over. Only time will tell.
In other news, there are only 3 more days until Friday. Hang in there, it’ll be the weekend again soon enough!