WANDERING around the streets of downtown Cincinnati, I got a huge surprise — I discovered a mural featuring The Sun outside one of the area’s oldest pubs!
If the city was trying to win me over, then it exceeded expectations as I left Arnold’s Bar and Grill — which was once a mob hangout and speakeasy during the prohibition era.
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The fateful sign was just one of the many amazing murals I discovered during my first ever trip to the place they call the Queen City.
There were also murals featuring famed astronaut Neil Armstrong (born and raised in Ohio), another showcasing boxer Ezzard “The Cincinnati Cobra” Charles, and an amazing work by Max Sansing depicting two people looking to the sky with hope for the future.
The city’s stunning murals are captured in the BLINK festival, taking place in October this year.
Launched in 2017, it’s a huge public art event with many amazing illustrations illuminated with incredible light displays and is definitely one you should put on your to-do list if you are lucky enough to be there when the festival is running.
They add a modern twist to the area, which has so much history — it was founded in 1788 and called one of the finest cities in the west — including the massive influence that came with the wave of German immigration to the region in the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s.
I learned all about this on the Queen City Underground Tour, where I discovered the tunnels below street level once used for brewing beer — the city’s chief export back in the day before prohibition was introduced in 1920.
After booze was outlawed, the tunnels that had been used as part of the John Kauffman brewery were sealed off and became a dumping ground for waste in the city, and were then forgotten about, lying undiscovered until the 1990s.
As I immersed myself in the city, the more I began to truly appreciate the story of Cincinnati and its important part in US history.
This was only further enhanced after a visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center — located on the banks of the Ohio River, which separated the slave states of the American South from the free states of the North during the US Civil War.
The museum gives visitors an educational and interactive experience about the struggle for freedom in the US, as well as telling the stories of those impacted.
It was a frankly humbling experience to go there and to listen to community engagement manager Novella Nimmo-Black who showed my group around and told us how her own ancestors had been slaves.
After such a packed day, it was nice to get back to the fantastic Kinley Cincinnati Hotel in the downtown area to relax and digest all that history and information.
Rooms are generous and very comfortable, as was the bed I fell into and snoozed until morning, when we headed to the historic Findlay Market, which dates all the way back to 1855, and to this day still offers a fabulous range of locally sourced meats and goods.
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We were spoilt with breakfast at Eckerlin Meats, which was absolutely delicious. Located on the site even before the market was established, it was founded in 1852 by Ernie Eckerlin — an immigrant from Baden in Germany.
Incredibly, the business has endured over the years and passed through Mr Eckerlin’s family, and we were lucky enough to meet Josh Lillis — a butcher who runs the place along with his brothers and sisters, and descendents of the founder.
His passion was clear as he told us all about goetta — a local speciality which includes a mix of pork, beef, oatmeal, onions and spices, plus some secret ingredients which Josh would not divulge to us!
My first experience of this delicacy was a memorable one. It was absolutely delicious and I would probably most closely liken it to haggis. It’s certainly a must-have on any visit to Cincinnati.
With Kentucky across the Ohio River, we just had to visit and headed into the state to spend some time in the quaint city of Augusta, which has a population of just over 1,000 people.
Its most famous residents, former anchorman Nick Clooney and his wife, Nina — mum and dad to Hollywood legend George — still live there in the town, where their famous son went to school.
GO: Cininnati
GO: CINCY
GETTING THERE: BA have direct flights from Heathrow to Cincinnati/N Kentucky International from £583pp. See BA.com
STAYING THERE: Rooms at the Kinley Cincinnati Downtown Hotel from approx £145 a night. See kinleycincinnati.com.
MORE INFO: For more on visiting the Cincy region see visitcincy.com
And by absolute coincidence, our group even had a brief encounter with Nina as we were being shown around the area!
We stopped for lunch at the Beehive August Tavern, which specialises in farm-to-table dining, where I had my very first Kentucky Hot Brown — a local dish which is packed with country ham, mornay sauce, bacon, tomato, cheddar jack all on Texas toast. Delicious! And what better way to wash it all down than some bourbon, of course.
So we headed to Augusta whisky distillery where we learned about the craft of the bourbon bottling process and had a fabulous tasting session.
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The people of Kentucky are rightly proud of their reputation for distilling high quality bourbon — and my dad was delighted to get his hands on a bottle I brought him back.
A great way to see Cincy’s sights is on a BB Riverboat Cruise.
We passed under the iconic John A Roebling suspension bridge, which was the inspiration for New York’s famous Brooklyn Bridge, designed by the same architect.
Delving deeper into Ohio’s history, we paid a visit to Fort Ancient — built around 2,000 years ago by the ancestors of modern American Indian tribes. It’s Ohio’s oldest state park and the largest hilltop enclosure in North America.
It was a powerful reminder of those who came before the time that Europeans landed in North America.
On my final day in Cincinnati, I got a true vintage experience when I visited the American Sign Museum, packed with an amazing collection of signs from throughout the decades.
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I rounded off my trip by heading to Skyline Chilli for lunch — a restaurant chain so iconic it even once featured in an episode of The Simpsons! (Season 32, episode 8 for those interested to see for themselves).
Read more on the Scottish Sun
Then it was time for my direct British Airways flight back to London. It was launched last year and opens up the city to a new, international market.
As I headed to board, I had popped into the newsagents in the airport — which is actually just across the Ohio river from Cincy in Kentucky — and picked up the local paper to read all about the forthcoming BLINK festival — and no it wasn’t The Sun!
