The Galt House, 144 N. 4th Street in Louisville, KY right on the Ohio River, garners more respect and admiration from me every time we stay there. It's listed in most directories as a 3.5 star hotel, which baffles me because it has every amenity you could want except for an indoor pool. The nearby Hyatt is listed as 4 stars, and it is nowhere near as nice the the GH, as far as I'm concerned. If you're ever planning a weekend visit to the Derby City, the Galt House is really the place to stay. It is older but impeccably maintained and several areas have recently been renovated. Because GH caters primarily to business travelers and convention visitors, you can really get a deal there during holiday periods when neither of those groups travel much. The last time we stayed there was during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, and this time we checked in on New Year's Day for two days. Both times, we got a really great price ($53 per day + $13/day in taxes and fees this last time through Priceline.com vs. the advertised price of $114/day) and both times they upgraded us to a suite at no extra charge, which had a sitting room w/TV, a big bedroom with TV, and an elegant glass-door shower big enough for 4 people! The only drawback to being there New Year's Day was that the place seemed virtually empty except for that boy riding his big wheel and the two little twin sisters in matching dresses, whom we passed often in the hallway.... I thought at first we had no warm water, but it turns out there were so few guests that it just took a long time for the hot stuff to be drawn up to our 3rd floor room from the boiler! After running the shower for about ten minutes we finally had all the steamy goodness we needed.
GH has 2 bars: Al J's, which is inside the huge glass conservatory which serves as the 3rd floor bridge between the hotel's two towers, and Jockey Silks, an intimate little place on the 2nd floor of the East(?) Tower. Al J's has a view of downtown and the river, and the bar is actually a saltwater fish tank with several varieties of fish that swim back and forth under your drink. Jockey Silks is low-ceilinged, wood-paneled, and has an impressive array of Bourbons. They're not cheap, but they're reasonable considering their convenient location in the hotel. We always stop in at one or the other for a nightcap before retiring to our room.
There are three restaurants, four if you count Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse, which is not part of the hotel but is directly accessible from it. Rivue is the $$$$ upscale penthouse restaurant that has relaxing live music and two parts of the dining area that rotate, giving you an alternatiing view of the river and the skyline. The food there is excellent, too. The other restaurant is on the Third Floor and is $$ for us cheapskates-- we've never eaten there, but the food looked and smelled delicious as we walked by. Fnally, there is Thelma's, a 24/7 snack bar in the conservatory next to Al J's, which has coffee, soft drinks, pastries, and sandwiches. If you go down to Thelma's in the wee hours, you might see an old, only slightly disheveled homeless man sitting in one of the unoccupied chairs tucked away in a corner. He wears a once-grand trenchcoat and sits quietly, sipping his cup of Thelma's coffee or dozing. They never run him off and he never makes a sound, an unwritten charitable agreement between them, a mark of true Southern Hospitality. God bless y'all!.
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