The Slower Road

Here at the Kentucky Horse Park, it’s time for BreyerFest: the annual celebration of, yes, Breyer model horses (and live ones, too) that attracts thousands of people to the park. After having worked here at the KHP for about ten years, I can say that, of all the many events at the Horse Park each year, BreyerFest is second in attendance only to the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event.

And, just like “Rolex,” BreyerFest attracts people from all over the place.

Among a row of cars in the parking lot early this morning, there was my car (from Kentucky) and cars from Texas, Ohio, Mississippi, Indiana, Florida, and Virginia. As I walked to the KHP restaurant for lunch today, I heard one family of six say they had come all the way from Arizona.

When I arrived this morning (before 8 a.m. to try to avoid the traffic and the crowds in the parking lot), the BreyerFest entrance gates weren’t open yet. But here’s what various portions of the line looked like:

.

.

.

For everyone (me included) having a busy Monday: Here’s our moment of zen.

.

.

.

I took these photos one evening last week. They are both of the field across Ironworks Pike from the Kentucky Horse Park.

Today’s post doesn’t feature any horses or carriages. But it does have a little bit of both local and Spanish flavor … to continue with our occasional look at life, history, and food here in Lexington, and with our recaps of the recent CAA trip to Sevilla.

One of our local food treasures is a downtown shop called Wine+Market.

A.J. and I often stop there for Friday-evening wine tastings. Or to pick up a bottle, or two, of wine. Or to get dessert for later, in the form of a few incomparable made-from-scratch cookies and/or macarons. 

But today, for the first time, we ate lunch there … finally trying a couple of items from the sandwich menu we’ve been drooling over.

.

A.J.'s grilled sandwich with chorizo and manchego (see? Spanish flavors!)

.

I took this photo with my phone, as that was the only camera I happened to have with me, and I do realize that it’s not the best. The sandwich, however, was pretty darned awesome, as was the one I tried: ham, Swiss cheese, and organic fig spread on toasted whole-wheat bread.

For proper photos, and a lovely review, of the delightful W+M, check out this blog post by Stella (who also makes all the aforementioned cookies and macarons; although, when she wrote the post last fall, she wasn’t yet baking for W+M).

One more Spanish-flavor connection: The wine-shop portion of W+M is the only place in Lexington we’ve found proper (dark, sweet, raisin-y) one-hundred-percent Pedro Ximenez sherry. With that, or a cream sherry, a dry Fino, or an even drier Manzanilla (all of which we can find at a variety of wine shops) — along with some homemade paella … or garlic shrimp … or cheese, ham, and olives — on a crazy hot day like we’ve had here lately, and it’s easy to pretend we’re on a mini-vacation in Spain. Ahhhh.

… sorry, but it is March, after all.

I had planned to go to bed early last night, or, at the very least, not too late. And then I had planned to post something carriage-related today.

BUT we ended up watching the Univ. of Kentucky Wildcats in their Sweet Sixteen game against the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Bearing in mind that I usually fall asleep during halftime of the 9:00 p.m. games, this was a big deal for me … and a very late night in the end. The game didn’t even start until about 9:45. It was such a close and exciting game that I was wide awake until the very end, and even for the press conferences (and the first of the game highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter) afterwards.

In case you haven’t already heard, the Cats beat OSU (the overall number-one seed in the entire tournament) for the first time in their six tournament meetings. The end of the game was thrilling for Cats fans: a UK game-winning shot in the last few seconds was followed by a last-second OSU shot that hit the rim but didn’t go in the basket and then was swatted out of range by a UK player at the final buzzer. The same ending that thrilled us left the OSU cheerleaders with shocked looks on their faces, and the OSU mascot, Brutus Buckeye, hanging his buckeye-nut head in disbelief.

Although we all had hope (we always have hope), I don’t think most of us expected the Cats to win this game. But it was very clear from the fantastic way they all played, and from the look in the eyes of senior Josh Harrellson that they would. not. lose. this. game.

As they head into another tough game tomorrow — against North Carolina — we say, Go Cats!!!

By the time Monday rolls around, the Cats will either be out of the tournament (no, no, no, no) or in the Final Four. And I’ll be writing that carriage-related post that I had planned for today.