Frankfort, Kentucky

When we got to a friend’s house in the Kentucky state capital of Frankfort, they were still in Europe but due back in couple of days. They have a really nice house and it was great staying there and being able to walk into Frankfort and check things out. The first day we went for breakfast at the White Light Diner and it was definitely the best Eggs Benedict I have ever eaten.

The historic district is really nice and on the last day we went for a tour round the old capitol building which is full of fascinating architectural, arty and historical stuff including a bizarre and very rare harp piano. In the lobby there is a staircase which is beautiful as well as being an incredibly ingenious piece of engineering and you can visit the original senate and house of represenatatives complete with spittoons, ink pots, quills and copies of historical proceedings, letters and legislation from very politiclaly interetsing times! Round the corner the Kentucky Historical Society is also a fascinating trip and I finally discovered the meaning of the line in Sixteen Tons that says: ‘I owe my soul to the company store’!


However, the place where we probably spent most time in Frankfort was the truly wonderful ‘Poor Richard’ bookstore. The bookstore is arranged over two floors and there are lots of old prints and paintings filling almost all the available wall space. The second floor is crammed full of dusty old books, maps and magazines with old ceiling fans spinning delicately above.

We were in there for about three hours and could have stayed longer but it was closing so we had to adjourn the Coffee Tree café next door. Discovering there was going to be live music we came back later and had a fantastic evening listening to an excellent piano, double bass and sax trio who played a very tight mix of jazz, blues and gospel. Owing to the fact that spouse and myself constituted about 50% of the audience we ended up chatting to the musicians quite a lot which was a lot fo fun. Only the bass player is a full time musician, the pianist tunes pianos for a living and the sax man is a sociology professor.

However, Kentucky is probably more famous for racehorses than anything else and it was inevitable that we would see some horses along the way so here they are….

.... apparently, it is not unusual to see rather large planes from the UAE parked up at Lexington’s rather small airport…