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KENTUCKY
Two hundred years after it was wrested from
the Native Americans, KENTUCKY still hasn't quite
made up its mind as to whether it belongs in the
North or the South. Both the rival presidents
in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson
Davis, were born here, and divisions were acute
between slave-owning farmers and the merchants
who depended on trade with the nearby cities of
the industrial North.
Officially neutral, seventy thousand Kentuckians
joined the Union army and forty thousand the Confederates.
After the war Kentucky sided with the South in
its hostility to Reconstruction, and since then
it has remained solidly Democrat.
Kentucky's rugged beauty is at its most appealing
in the mountainous east and the small historic
towns of the Bluegrass Downs, with visits enlivened
by the varied attractions of bourbon whiskey,
thoroughbred horses and bluegrass music. Louisville,
home of the Kentucky Derby, is a busy manufacturing
and arts center; the more reserved Lexington,
eighty miles east, is a major horse-breeding market.
Covington and Newport, Kentucky
Covington, directly across the Ohio River on the
Kentucky side, is very much a part of the Cincinnati
hinterland. It can be reached from downtown Cincinnati
by walking over the bright-blue 355-yard 1867
John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, at the bottom
of Walnut Street, which served as a prototype
for the Brooklyn Bridge. Once across, you're confronted
by the much-hyped Covington Landing – "the largest
waterfront complex on inland waters" – a collection
of cafés, shops and clubs on permanently moored
boats that's little more than an upmarket mall
on water.
The BB riverboat company (tel 859/261-8500) runs
sightseeing cruises ($12.50) from the Landing
– reservations are recommended. Ten minutes' walk
southwest of the bridge brings you to the attractive,
narrow, tree-lined streets and nineteenth-century
houses of MainStrasse Village. It's a Germanic
neighborhood of antique shops, bars and restaurants
that plays host to the lively Maifest on the third
weekend of each May, and is the centerpiece of
the citywide Oktoberfest on the weekend after
Labor Day. At 6th and Philadelphia streets, 21
mechanical figures accompanied by glockenspiel
music toll the hour on the German Gothic Carroll
Chimes Bell Tower. Just beyond Covington at I-75
exit 186 is the Oldenberg Brewery, crammed with
boozing memorabilia; tours of the microbrewery
and its museum cost $3 (daily 10am–5pm).
Across the Licking River from Covington, the subdued
town of Newport has gotten a lot livelier since
the recent opening of the impressive Newport Aquarium,
One Aquarium Way (daily 10am–6pm; tel 859/491-FINS
or 1-800/406-FISH. Clear underwater tunnels and
see-through floors allow visitors to literally
be surrounded by sharks and snapping gators
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