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| Soldier & Sailor Monument |
Well, no one should have been surprised. The year before, Indiana swept the Great
American Beer Festival, winning more prestigious beer medals than any other
state. Good beer makes anything
possible. But people who have never been
to Indianapolis and assume it is just another dying, dull, rust and corn-belt
Midwest city could not be more mistaken.
Indy is amazing, and getting better by the day.
Indy’s very walkable downtown is green (with 350 acres of parks, rivers, tree-lined boulevards and canals); European (with impressive monuments and murals); trendy (with 300 restaurants and a national farm-to-table reputation); and artistic (with a unique pedestrian path that stretches across a state park, from a downtown zoo past world class history, art, and sports museums).
And did I mention beer? Locals Sun King and Upland lead a team of 64 Indiana breweries, and craft beer is supported by nearly every restaurant and bar in town. It is the cleanest city you will ever see, with horizon-to-horizon vistas of green trees, while armadas of white clouds float overhead in majestic Midwestern corn-blue skies.
Best of all are the people.
Eventually, Indy will be filled with hipster transplants and become the
new Austin, Seattle, Portland or Denver, but right now Indy is home-base to a
young, unpretentious crowd of locals who make no secret of the fact that they
like good food (and lots of it), enjoy live music, partying, beer and fun. Today, bikers and joggers are few and far between,
but an enlightened city leadership is building miles of new bike trails
(including the most innovative urban bike path in the nation). With a new bike sharing program coming, Indy
will soon lead the Midwest for their appreciation of the outdoors, health and
recreation.
City Layout
The downtown was designed in 1820 by Alexander Ralston, an
assistant to Pierre L’Enfant, the19th Century “genius” who brought
us endless traffic congestion and confusion in Washington D.C. Indy uses the same city plan, a center
circle with spokes of streets that radiate out, criss-crossing with traditional
north-south streets, making the downtown area hopelessly confusing to a first
time visitor. But no worries. It’s small enough, there are ample maps and
signage everywhere, and once you learn a few high landmarks that poke up into
the sky along the horizon, you can get anywhere.
Indy is not Paris, and there are plenty of boring blocks for
every great one. But it is a wonderful
city to stretch your legs, and from any downtown hotel you can soon be strolling
beside a canal, river, park or monument.
Some things to do:
Bike The Indianapolis
Cultural Trail
This brand new, $63 million, 8-mile, circular bike trail
links every major downtown attraction and neighborhood and is a great way to
see the city. Indy was planned in the
1800s with streets wide enough to turn a horse-drawn wagon. In the 20th Century, those wide
streets were converted to one-way traffic, making it even easier to get out of
town. The result was that everyone fled
to live in the suburbs and downtown Indy was a ghost town after five. Today, enlightened city fathers have taken
back one full lane of major downtown streets and turned them into bike
paths. Creative signage and patterns on
the path make the Cultural Bike Path easy to follow. Since the city is as flat as a cornfield,
it’s easy to zip around by bike. A bike
share program is coming soon, but until then, there are convenient bike rentals
at the City Market, an old 1821 gem of a brick warehouse. With a huge open hall, iron railings along
the second floor and lit by skylights, City Market is filled with stalls
selling a variety of food and is a favorite lunch spot for locals. There’s an excellent tap room on the second
floor with 20 local beers; ask for a free Indiana Beer Passport. It’s a guide to the state’s breweries and
beers with room to add your own tasting notes. |
| City Market |
See the
Monuments
Young farm boys from Indiana have been cannon fodder for
America since the Civil War, volunteering – and dying – in astonishing numbers. Indiana’s casualty rate in war is double the
national average. Some 75% of the
Indiana men eligible for the army volunteered to fight in the Civil War, the
second highest per capita rate of any state in the country.
In tribute to these men, Indy has built more war monuments
that any other city, and is second only to Washington DC in the total number of
war memorials. Unlike many decaying
city war memorials, the ones in Indy are huge, impressive, and kept in
immaculate condition. The museums that
go with them are a tad hokey and underfed, but the monuments are something
else. Leading is the Soldiers and
Sailors Monument, a 284-foot tower that is the heart of the city, from which
all spokes lead out. You can climb 330
steps to the top or take a reasonably priced elevator for $2. Everything about the monument is
colossal. This monument, nearly as high
as the Statue of Liberty, honors soldiers of the Civil War and Spanish American
War. You can walk around its huge
statues of soldiers and civilians or sit by its fountains many times and see
something new each visit. The Civil War
museum in the basement could use some love, but buffs will enjoy it.
The Indiana War Memorial is a few blocks away and is a big,
solid chunk of a memorial, with a basement military museum covering all wars
from the Revolution on. Indy’s truly
horrifying war museum is also here, honoring the USS Indianapolis, the WWII ship immortalized in Jaws.
The ship was on a secret mission to deliver parts for the atomic bomb when
it was sunk by a Japanese submarine. No
one knew it had gone down and there was no attempt to rescue survivors. More than 900 men went into the water in the
dark of night with nothing but lifejackets.
Only 300 survived – many of those lost were eaten by swarms of sharks
that surrounded the survivors and forced them into ever increasingly smaller
circles. If you have trouble visualizing
the horror of that, the museum has paintings to help.
Eat and Drink Indy
Style
People in Indy like to eat…and why not? This area that has always appreciated
farm-to-table, local restaurants having long traditions with local farms.
Portions can be outrageous, particularly anything with pork (pork tenderloin
sandwiches are the city’s signature dish).
Some classics not to miss:
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| Rathskeller |
The Rathskeller is a rambling, huge, authentic old German
restaurant with a long beer hall lined with dead animal heads and an outdoor
beer garden filled with live bands.
Their wienershictizel is as good as any in Germany, and the portion was
the size of a deflated basketball. Their
pretzels are just as large and tasty.
When there’s a band, the outdoor bar is filled with hundreds of young
people.
St. Elmo Steak House is where all the celebrities who were
in town for the Super Bowl had dinner. It’s a dark wood, clubby, men’s steak
house, with a maze of different rooms and floors. They’re all cozy and Old
World, particularly the main bar and the upstairs bar. St. Elmo is known for their spicy shrimp
cocktail; if you can’t afford dinner, at least stop in for one of those.
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| St. Elmo's shrimp cocktail |
The Slippery Noodle Inn is Indiana’s oldest bar and a former
hangout of gangster (and local hero) John Dillinger. Dillinger allegedly shot holes in the back
bar. There are slugs in the bricks, and
the bar staff will show them to you if you ask.
Although Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI in Chicago, he’s buried in
Indy at the Crown Hill Cemetery. The Slippery Noodle is a downtown institution
with live blues bands and a good late night stop.
Walk White River
State Park
In 1834, Indy built the Central Canal to the White River
with the hope that it would provide power and transportation to turn the young
city into an industrial giant.
Fortunately, the canal silted up and was a complete failure. Indy never became a manufacturing center like
Detroit or Pittsburgh.
Today, the canal has gone through a renaissance and is lined
with pedestrian and bike paths. It’s
like the San Antonio Riverwalk, but without the bars and restaurants. That’s too bad – maybe the bars will come
someday, but it’s still a very pleasant walk, and the canal is connected to a
beautiful 250-acre park that runs to the river.
Other trails wind along the White River with gorgeous skyline views in
the background. In this natural area,
you can walk from city’s fine zoo to a minor-league baseball stadium or to a
series of impressive museums.
The zoo has a series of biomes that showcase everything from
lions to dolphins. It’s right downtown,
which makes it unusual. The Eiteljorg Museum is one of the nation’s finest museums of Native American and Western
art. It’s gorgeous, with big paintings
by big name Western artists like Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington. But while the paintings are big, the museum
is just right -- small and manageable.
Next, door, the Indiana State Museum is a hodgepodge of
natural and cultural history, but the big news is the Star Wars exhibit is
coming here from May to September 2013, filled with costumes, artifacts and
original models from the movies.
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| Indiana Historical Society |
Visit a Museum
The Indianapolis Art Museum is a few miles from downtown,
but worth the trip. It’s one of the top
10 in the nation in terms of its collection, and it’s located on 100 acres of
land that was formerly the estate of pharmaceutical king J.K. Lilly Jr. That means there’s lots of money behind the
museum, and it shows. There’s a bit of everything here, including an outdoor
sculpture park, and lots of familiar paintings by big name artists.
Tour the Raceway
The Indy 500 is the biggest one-day sporting event in the
world, drawing 400,000 people. It’s a
good thing/bad thing for Indy.
Certainly, if you like auto racing, this is the ultimate bucket list
destination, and there’s plenty at the 2.5 mile track to see year-round
including a racing hall of fame with many of the winning cars, expensive rides
in race cars and pace cars around the track, and other tours and racing
events. However, if you have little
interest in auto racing, the Indy 500 tends to overshadow everything else about
this up and coming city, which has far more to offer than a racetrack. It’s very easy to have an enjoyable weekend
in Indy without ever going near anything to do with auto racing, except maybe
having a beer or two with racing names.
IF YOU GO: Most
people will see Indy on a convention or sporting event. They have an excellent set up with great
hotels, restaurants and attractions all within walking distance. It would also make a good add-on to a
Kentucky Bourbon Trail trip. Indy is two
hours from Louisville and three hours from Lexington, so it makes a nice
loop. For info: . visitindy.com
