Since we decided to drive home, we stopped in Lexington Friday night. I did a quick check online and rolled the dice with Hotwire.com and found a reasonably priced hotel for $75/night.
After I purchased it I found out it was a Comfort Inn so I was expecting an outdated run down no frills hotel. After driving 20 minutes to get to the location after hotwire gave a nonfunctional phone number for the hotel and the street name did not show up on my GPS, the hotel was a pleasant surprise
Hotel Name: Comfort Inn
City: Nicholasville, KY (just south of Lexington)
Turns out the street looked pretty new so it probably is not officially on the street maps. Not sure why the number was bogus.
Pros:
1. Fancy lobby that was very modern
2. Friendly desk staff
3. Huge room
4. Modern room with flat screen TV (very upscale)
5. Soft and hard pillows
6. Huge selection for breakfast
Cons:
1. Does not pull up on a GPS (I updated my TomTom prior to leaving) but did on google navigation). This was a minor issue
2. No pool as hotwire listed. So just be aware
3. Quirky thing when we checked in was that their keycard system was not working so the front desk guy who was alone had to check you in and then escort you to your room and then we left the door open so I could get the family and luggage. This also meant we had to eat breakfast in shifts since we did not want to leave our room open. As a result, checking in took a while since there were 3 people ahead of me.
4. The only real issue was that the eating area had very few tables so Jamal and I had to eat the first part of our breakfast on a couch.
Overall a great hotel though.
During the day, I planned out two activities:
1. The Kentucky Museum of Aviation. Reasonable rates to get in as we paid the family rate and paid around $30. You get to sit and play in one airplane and one military helicopter and view a few more. We are walking on our own when the tour guide came up and although he was friendly about it, told my kids to get out of the backseat of the helicopter even though the door was open and it was the helicopter we were allowed to play in. We quickly scooted over to the plane we could play in to avoid him and he followed us. However he quickly made up for everything by showing the kids the features of the plane and giving them pilots wings. He later gave them free magazines and some good educational information. My kids loved it. We spent about 1.5 hours in the museum which was ample time.
The highlight of the day was the Sunburst Horsemanship School. I saw this place listed after looking through the listings of attractions in the area on TripAdvisor. Most of the things in Lexington are boring historical things. Tanya, who is 5 years old, loves horses more than anything.
My kids have gone horseback riding before but those were your traditional rides led by a tour guide. This place seemed different. I called Saturday morning to see if she would take 3 beginners who were 5, 7, and 9 years old and she said she could in the early afternoon. Rates were reasonable as well (surprisingly).
We showed up and she delivered what was promised and more. My kids helped saddle up the horses, learned to mount the horse correctly then learned to ride the horse by getting the horse to start, stop, turn, trot etc. She had one helper for each kid and an extra one for the 5 year old. Each kid got personalized attention along with have Rosemary take the lead. Overall it probably lasted a couple hours and my kids would not stop talking about it the rest of the way home apart from when they would watch their DVD movie Frozen. It was a great unique experience for the kids that nobody should pass up if they are near Lexington.