Fabulous Foodie Tour of Lexington
We love travel. And we also love food at the many locations we visit. So it makes sense for us to look for great restaurants and to find people to share their fabulous eating locations with us. So, foodie tours were found on one of our many trips and we found that we love them! Have someone local walk around town with us talking and eat their local wonderful specialties – what could be better?
You can check out some of our fabulous foodie experiences here and see some of the fabulous food we have been scarfing down here – https://www.wanderlustwonder.com/foodie-reviews/ So when I was scrolling through Facebook one morning to keep up with all the fascinating news, I was thrilled to see that we actually had a foodie walking tour right here in Lexington.
Erin talking about Lexington,
We met at the old courthouse which was easy to find and our little group was all clustered together in one area and very easy to locate and join to start our tour. Erin spent some time introducing us to each other and talking about the variety of folks in our group. We weren’t the only ones who lived in the area and it was fun spending time getting to know the other travelers.
We headed out of the courthouse and walked to our first restaurant stop. Erin talked to us for the entire tour, explaining the history of each area and the different restaurants we visited. I had some problems with my back but there was always a place for me to plunk down and take a little rest so it was no problem. We stopped at our first restaurant and all headed inside to see the restaurant and to have a delicious and wonderful bite to eat. They had some food waiting for us on the tables and, as we finished, they brought out some more fabulous bites. Erin introduced the restaurant owners and they welcomed us to their restaurant. It was really nice and we enjoyed every bite!
Fabulous food!
After we finished eating, we headed out the door for another walk and a different restaurant experience. For the next couple of hours, we visited several different restaurants and walked all over downtown Lexington with Erin entertaining us the whole time. Tom has lived in Lexington his whole life and I came to the University of Kentucky and never left but we both learned more about Lexington that we never knew.
If you want to see downtown Lexington and experience some wonderful restaurants, you should take this tour or one of the many others they offer. The are just getting started in offering some tours of the surrounding towns as well so ask about them as well. I hope you enjoy the tours as much as we did!
Categories: Accommodations, Cities, Countries, Girlfriends Getaway, Hotels, Milwaukee, Tours, United States, Wisconsin
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Getaway to Fabulous Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge
My sister in law and I just spent a few days in the beautiful Gatlinburg area and had a completely wonderful time. I have been to the area several times now at different times of the year and a visit in the warm and lovely summer made a completely different and beautiful experience. I wanted a nice hotel for our girlfriends getaway and found a completely lovely and very reasonably priced location at the Pigeon River Inn. The hotel was clean and spacious and our room was lovely and roomy. It’s located on the main road in Pigeon Forge and only a few minutes drive to lots of activities and I recommend it to everyone. Breakfast was included in the hotel price and it was fresh and wonderful every morning. We drove right into the parking lot from the main road and carried in all our luggage and other goodies and got unpacked and settled in.
Categories: Accommodations, Countries, Family Travel, Girlfriends Getaway, Hotels, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, United States
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Lovely, warm Sarasota
It’s a beautiful, warm day here in Lexington, Kentucky but I still can’t help thinking about our lovely girlfriends getaway to Sarasota a few weeks ago. The beaches in the area, the many activities we participated in and the time spent with a couple of girlfriends was wonderful! I decided we needed to return to the beautiful area when I remembered our last visit there and the great stay we had at a condo right at the beach. So I contacted the local press people for Sarasota and they were absolutely wonderful about helping us with our visit. Nate Sweetman, their Communications and Public Relations Coordinator was wonderful and fast with his replies to my email and he arranged absolutely everything I asked for. I know it’s not easy and requires a lot of time to work with a travel writer to arrange one of these press trips and I appreciate all he did for us.
First, he worked with a local hotel and set up a fabulous stay for the three of us. We headed for Sarasota with our car loaded down with all the vital things we needed for a week away and pulled into the wonderful Siesta Key Beach Resort and Suites. It is not a really fancy hotel but we were super pleased with our lovely room with an adjoining bedroom for the one girl in our group who can keep the rest of us awake with her slightly annoying snoring. There was also a small kitchen where we unpacked all our wonderful snacks and drinks to get us through a week.
The front of our comfy and pretty hotel. The Siesta Key Beach Resort and Suites.
Our nice and beautiful kitchen.
We were not actually right on the beach but it was a short walk anytime we felt the need to see the entire area.
Our kitchen overlooked the beautiful pool area.
We had a nice big living room with two queen sized beds for the two of us and another bed in the attached bedroom.
Plenty of room to relax and sleep.
Once we relaxed and unpacked, we decided to visit the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens and have a little visit to this beautiful area. Only two of us decided to visit the gardens and we were amazed at the beautiful and lush growth.
Beautiful and lush growth everywhere!
The next day, we took one of the many tours of the city with the trolleys from Discover Sarasota Tours which was absolutely wonderful and a great introduction to the city.
On this classic City Sightseeing Tour, learn where to tour, shop, and dine! Get an entertaining overview of Sarasota’s rich history, culture, and neighborhoods. The tour guides were wonderful and told us all about the city. Every day we had tons of choices about what to do and where to get our next fabulous meal. There are several museums and we managed to visit a few of them. One of the very best things we did was to visit the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium. There were tons of sea life and it was a great morning, just walking around and seeing everything.
Beautiful lion fish!
After the aquarium, visitor can choose to board one of the Sea Life Encounter cruises to see the area and the local wildlife.
Join a marine biologist on this approximately 2 hour cruise through Sarasota and Roberts Bays. Observe our Florida manatees and resident population of bottlenose dolphins while learning about the ecology, history, and folklore of the area. Your guide will lead you on a short nature walk on an uninhabited island followed by a unique opportunity to view pelicans, herons, ibis and egrets in their nesting habitat. The highlight of this trip is the collection of a sample of marine life with a trawl net. Observe and handle some of the curious residents of Sarasota Bay: puffer fish, sea horses, stone crabs, and cow fish to name a few.
Our 45-foot pontoon boats, the Explorer V and Explorer VI, are Coast Guard-inspected covered vessels equipped with on-board restrooms, comfortable seating, cold drinks and snacks available for purchase. This trip is suitable for all ages. Reservations are recommended, and charters are available. Check-in is 30 minutes prior to departure.
The cruise was a wonderful experience and a great way to see the area and some local wildlife. The last couple of days we spent walking the area, and the beach which was quite wonderful. Every restaurant we visited was better than the previous one and we had wonderful food.
We enjoyed every minute of our wonderful visit to Sarasota and would love to go back. If you are planning a beach visit, check out Sarasota!
Categories: Accommodations, Beach, Cities, Countries, Florida, Girlfriends Getaway, Hotels, Sarasota, United States
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Another Visit to Lovely Chicago
Front of the Embassy Suites Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile
Well, after specifically saying that I had never been to Chicago, never visited there, and never shared any wonderful adventures there, now I have been there several times.
But not too many! Each visit has been during a different season and with different companions and each one has been quite lovely and different.
This trip was different from the others as I traveled with some women friends and we really enjoyed being together for a few days. We stayed in one of the nicest hotels in Chicago and were able to really relax and get some sleep. We had stayed at the Embassy Suites Lakefront on one of our previous visits and we knew we loved Embassy Suites but the Embassy Suites by Hilton Chicago Downtown Magnificent Mile was quite an experience. Not only did they have their absolutely fabulous hot prepared to order breakfast every morning, it was an easy walk to just about anything we wanted to see. Breakfast was a completely lovely spread of food which included a hot bar where they made pretty anything your little travelin’ heart could desire. Which for me was an omelet every single morning. Every. Single. Morning. It was quite, quite lovely.
21C Museum Hotel Lexington
As a travel writer, like most people, this year has been a tough one. Without any travel, I didn’t have much to write about and it made me restless and unhappy. So I was thrilled when we finally saw the end of the tunnel and everyone started getting vaccinated. Those destinations that had closed their doors to visitors were finally opening and I would be able to travel and write about it!
So exciting! My photographer husband Tom and I were interested in viewing the annual fireworks display in Lexington so I contacted a new hotel downtown, the 21C Museum Hotel. We didn’t actually know where it was located since we hadn’t been downtown since it had been opened but we were sure we could find it. Lexington is not that big! We were thrilled when Brian Pulley, their Director of Sales and Marketing, kindly replied to my email and offered us a one night stay.
Front of the hotel in downtown Lexington,
We made plans for our stay and invited my brother and sister in law to join us in visiting and watching the fireworks. We were so excited! This was the first trip we were taking in over a year! We weren’t going far but we packed our suitcase, snacks and any other sundries we might need for our one night stay, then headed downtown to our fabulous hotel!
A Relaxing Stay at the King and Prince Resort
View of the fabulous beach from Echo, the in house restaurant
Because I have been so busy like everyone else, I have been really lazy about writing some articles about our last few trips. With the pandemic sweeping over the entire world, that has taken over so many of our lives, my husband Tom and I have stayed hunkered down in our house reading and catching up on television shows. But like all the many travelers everywhere, we are dying to go on a trip.
So I began planning our next trip keeping in mind all the precautions we would have to take. I decided I wanted to share the wonderful King and Prince Resort on St. Simons Island with my husband who had never been there and would take some wonderful photos for me, I contacted them and they were quite wonderful about working together. But they wondered if I had written about the last trip I took there with my lovely sister in law in January. Had I written about that?
Uh.
No.
No, I hadn’t as I hadn’t done much writing at all. What a shame I had let those memories slip away and all I had was the wonderful memories of the few days we spent there and a few pictures.
Getaway to Sandusky, Ohio
Well, life is kinda crazy right now, isn’t it?
We are stuck in our house along with most everyone else in our city to try to keep the bug from spreading. Luckily, we were able to get in our trip up north to see the area and find some lovely snow. I know you all can’t get out to this area anytime soon but I hope you will save some of these articles for ideas for your next trip because we had an absolutely marvelous time and I would love you to see some of the areas we discovered.
Before carefully packing up all our goodies for the trip, we jetted over to Kohl’s to check out some special deals they had going on. They are one of my very favorite stores in our area and you can find just about anything you need from clothes for everyone in your family to furnishings for your house. You can check their web page where you can find just about anything you need from clothes for everyone in your family to furnishings for your house. A good half of the items in my clothes closet to bedding, towels, etc. all come from one of their stores so check them out.
Once we got back home, we loaded up everything in our vehicle and headed up north to Sandusky, Ohio where we had read they had snow. It didn’t take long to drive into snow and it was wonderful to have the surroundings change from our warmer temperatures to icy cold snow. Snow covered the ground everywhere we looked and we were just thrilled with our wonderful stay at the Kalahari Resort. They have several places to stay in the area and we were astonished at the size of the resort and everything they had to offer from indoor and outdoor water parks to fabulous, comfortable rooms, to great restaurants where we had some wonderful meals.
Categories: Accommodations, Cities, Countries, Hotels, Ohio, Sandusky, United States
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A Few Days in Music City, USA (Fabulous Nashville!)
My sister in law and I were exhausted.
We had just driven for several hours from Florida and were ready to relax in our room at the Drury Inn in Nashville where we had been offered a couple of nights. We pulled up to the front of the hotel, parked, and dragged ourselves into the lovely lobby to check in. Where they had no record for us. No record of our stay. But I was sure…wait. Maybe there was more than one Drury hotel in Nashville…and indeed there was. We were at the wrong one. They checked for us and found that we were all set up at downtown Drury Inn. Which, luckily for us was not a far drive at all. We loaded our tired selves back in the car and headed for where we actually supposed to lay our tired bodies down.
The Drury Hotel Nashville Downtown was absolutely as fabulous as the one we had just seen and we had no problem getting ourselves checked and getting our stuff upstairs to our lovely and wonderful room.
Drury Hotel Downtown Nashville
Categories: Accommodations, Cities, Countries, Hotels, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Tags: Jan Ross Travel Blogger
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Fabulous Stay at the Sonesta Resort, Hilton Head Island
Beautiful view of the beach and the surrounding area.
It was the resort itself that impressed us the most. We had actually visited the same area a few years ago but as time passed, it had been redone and beautifully renovated so we almost didn’t recognize how beautiful it now was. My sister-in-law and I were on our second girlfriends getaway to Hilton Head Island and we couldn’t imagine staying in a nicer place to stay than the Sonesta Resort Hilton Head, so we worked with them to arrange a press visit and how wonderful it was!
Categories: Accommodations, Beach, Cities, Countries, Hilton Head, Hotels, Islands, South Carolina, Tybee Island, United States
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