This article—shared in partnership with our friends at VisitLex—is part of 52Cities, a column where we share editor-curated and community-loved recommendations for visiting our favorite places.
As a native Atlantan, I’m no stranger to visiting Southern cities—spring breaks spent in Florida beach towns, Girl Scouts trips to Savannah, an especially memorable New Year’s Eve in Nashville, and plenty of weekend getaways in the Carolinas. But up until recently, I’d never spent much time in Kentucky. Sure, there was the family pilgrimage to Mammoth Cave when I was a teenager, too cool to appreciate the wonders of eyeless fish (Google it) and the world’s largest underground cave system, but the Bluegrass State had yet to pull me in. After a recent trip to Lexington, all of that changed.