It was a "B"-eautiful day in Louisville!

Not only was the sun shining, but everything we did somehow had something to do with the letter "B"! It certainly wasn't planned...but our day consisted of braille, baseball, bourbon, betting and the bard. Our first stop was the American Printing House for the Blind, which is the world's largest publishing house dedicated to the visually impaired. For my future 2nd grade students, I can't wait to tell you about this visit and show you some of the items they gave me. We got to go behind the scenes and see them make books and magazines in braille. We also toured the museum that talked about the history of how braille came to be the system used by visually impaired people. Here are some pictures from the museum.

Me hanging out with Louis Braille!




Mom trying to use a scale to write braille...it wasn't easy!


That's a lot of braille! Braille takes up much more space than regular print. Here's the encyclopedias that they created.


Legos!? Actually they are special math cubes that kids who are visually impaired can use. Looks like fun math to me!

After that trip it was onto the Louisville Slugger Factory in downtown Louisville. It was easy to find when we were driving there...just look for the giant bat!





We toured the factory and it was awesome! Did you know that it takes a machine only 30 seconds to make a bat? It used to take a person 30 minutes. They have a special machine from Italy, the only one in the world, that has a computer that can store up to 1,000 different measurements. This machine is used for the professional baseball players' bats. I got to hold the bat that would eventually be used by Manny Ramirez! Since they are making wooden bats, they produce a lot of sawdust. Every week, they end up with 15,000 pounds of sawdust. That's a lot of sawdust! Every week, they pay a turkey farmer in Indiana to come and pick up all that sawdust. He uses it for bedding for the turkeys.

We also went through the museum. Here's a picture of the bat that Jackie Robinson used. If you were in my class this year, you know who he is!


There was a mini baseball diamond and look which team is pitching! Also they have many of the Red Sox players bats on display from the World Series.


After the baseball factory and lunch, we headed to Bardstown, about 20 miles outside of Louisville. This is the 2nd oldest city in Kentucky. It is also apparently the bourbon capital of the world. We toured the Heaven Hill Distillery. It is the oldest family run distillery in the country. We went into the building where they store the bourbon for many years. One building holds between 15,000 and 20,000 barrels, which means when it is full the building weighs 10 million pounds! I was a little nervous being in that building! Sorry I forgot to take pictures.

We hurried back to Louisville to make it to Churchill Downs before 5:30. Churchill Downs is the home of the Kentucky Derby, the most famous horse race. The races were over for the day, but the security guard let us go into the track and take some pictures.




Our last stop of the day was going to be free Shakespeare in the park. We first went to dinner which was not any easy task. At first we couldn't find any restaurants! Then we turned a corner and found a whole street shut down, tons of restaurants and a stage where they were going to do a country concert. We ate dinner and then headed to the park to see "Pericles", a play by Shakespeare. The park has the oldest running free Shakespeare festival in the country! Since I studied Shakespeare in college, I was very excited. Also, this play was the same play that I saw when I traveled to the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

At 11:00 that night, when we returned to our hotel room, we were exhausted! It was a full day in Louisville. Time to rest up for our next adventure...Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee!