Beyond the Derby: Horse around in Louisville
You can watch how Major League Baseball bats are made at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in downtown Louisville, yet Louisville — more populous than 11 MLB cities — surprisingly doesn't have any professional sports teams of its own. Instead, Louisville residents pour their enthusiasm (and thousands of gallons of mint juleps) into a two-week festival culminating Saturday, May 7, in the Kentucky Derby.
The Derby, continuously run since 1875, is the World Series of thoroughbred racing squeezed into a two-minute race. Much more than that, it's a major-league celebration that's been called the "biggest party in the South" (sorry, Mardi Gras). But whether you make it to the Derby this year, or visit Louisville when it's less crowded, you'll discover there are many ways to horse around in town that don't involve betting or binoculars.
Horses (of course)
Visiting Louisville without catching a race at Churchill Downs, or at least seeing it, would be like skipping the Eiffel Tower in Paris. You can choose among several guided tour options; all include admission to the Kentucky Derby Museum at the famed racetrack.
Bourbon bonanza
Bourbon lovers are drawn to the distilleries around Louisville just as wine lovers flock to the wineries of the Napa Valley. Several Louisville-area historic distilleries with tours and tasting rooms are on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, topped by the extravagant Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, which opened downtown in 2013. If you'd rather not drive, Urban Bourbon Trail restaurants, taverns and hotel bars where fine bourbons are served are within walking distance from downtown.
Museums and more
The Slugger Museum and Bourbon Experience are two of the 10 museums and attractions found on a four-block stretch of downtown Louisville's Museum Row. The two newest additions are the Muhammad Ali Center and Frazier History Museum. The former is a six-story, $80-million tribute to the city's most famous native son. The latter (with no connection to Ali's boxing rival Joe Frazier) features several daily interpretations of scenes from history by costumed performers. Also, the Speed Art Museum at the University of Louisville reopened in March with the completion of a $50-million addition that nearly tripled the gallery space.
Kentucky kingdom
For the kid in all of us, Kentucky Kingdom and Hurricane Bay just added Storm Chaser, the first roller-coaster in the U.S. to feature a barrel-roll drop from the equivalent of 10 stories up. Along with four other coasters, the amusement park has 31 rides and 13 waterpark rides, slides and pools — fun for kids and adults.
Fossil fun
Besides hiking and bird-watching, fossil-viewing is popular at Falls of the Ohio State Park, just across the mighty Ohio River from Louisville. Limestone fossil beds cover 220 acres at the river's edge, revealing many fossils from 390 million years ago. The best fossil hunting is between August and November, when the river level is lowest.
Coming soon
You don't need to watch a horse race to come to Louisville for a big event. Abbey Road on the River (May 26-30) is the world's largest Beatles-inspired music festival, and the Forecastle music and art festival (July 15-17) attracts more than 75,000 annually to Louisville's Waterfront Park for bands like this year's headliners, Alabama Shakes and The Avett Brothers. Live music, especially indie rock, is ingrained in the culture of Louisville year-round — a city where "Keep Louisville Weird" is a popular slogan.
How to get there
Louisville International Airport is only 2.5 miles from Churchill Downs and seven miles from downtown. Visit united.com or use the United app to plan your trip to see the ponies, the city, or both.
We have operated more than 85 repatriation flights from Panama City, Guatemala City, Quito, Lima, San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa and Roatan, bringing nearly 12,000 people home. We will continue working with government officials to operate extra flights to Houston from Quito, San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa and from Lima to Washington Dulles and beginning April 5, we will begin operating multiple charter flights between Delhi and San Francisco. We continue to review more opportunities for flights between the United States and other countries to bring citizens home.
Video provided by the U.S. Embassy Ecuador of Americans returning home on United.
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We also recently reinstated several international flights back into our schedule to support customers and essential businesses which depend on these routes. As a result, we will be the only airline to offer service between Newark/New York and London, San Francisco and Sydney, as well as Houston and São Paulo, Brazil.
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Certain tickets cannot be changed on united.com or the mobile app, including tickets booked through another airline (if the ticket receipt does not begin with 016). Please contact the original ticketing airline for changes.
Follow the steps below to stay up to date, change or cancel your flight.
Change your current flight:
- On the united.com homepage, select "My Trips" and enter your flight information to retrieve your flight.
- Select "Change flight" and then "Edit" to make the following changes:
- Date of travel or destination
- Add a flight
- Remove a flight
- Select "Continue" and choose a new flight option
- Continue through booking to confirm your new flight
Note: The change fee will display as waived, but any difference in fare may apply.
Cancel your flight and rebook later:
- On the united.com homepage, select "My Trips" and enter your reservation information to retrieve your flight
- Select "Cancel flight"
- Confirm flight cancellation
- If you have future flight credit, when you return to the reservation, select "Use Future Flight Credit" to shop for new flights and apply the credit towards a new flight.
Canceling or changing an award flight:
When you select "Cancel flight," you will have the option to cancel your award reservation and redeposit the miles or to cancel your award reservation and use those miles for another trip in the future.
*We're currently experiencing heavy traffic to united.com. If you experience an error while trying to change or cancel your flight, please try again later.
Click through the slideshow below for more detailed instructions:
Start on the United homepage:
User can select 'My Trips' on the homepage widget to find and retrieve their reservation.
