At this point, you are probably thinking, hey, wasn’t the whole plan to go to Madison? Well, we did, but we didn’t stay long and we didn’t do much other than eat cheese curds and go to the concert, so we won’t be writing about Madison.

Instead, we are jumping to Lexington. We’ve been before and enjoyed the city. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy bourbon??? (OK, I don’t, but Robert enjoys it more than enough for the two of us.)

Robert made it to two different distilleries this trip. First, we went went to Heaven Hill. Robert loved it. There was no tour, but he got to try five different bottles, none of which are readily available in stores. He was in heaven. And thrilled to learn that one bottle was for sale (to tour customers only) in the tasting room. Yes, he made me buy a bottle too. After Heaven Hill, we made our way to the James E Pepper distillery. This time, we got to do a tour of the distillery and — before you ask — yes, Robert bought another bottle.

Once the distilleries were out of the way, we got to do the fun stuff. Horses! Whooo hooo! We booked a tour of Old Friends Farm. This amazing farm takes care of retired horses. It started off with a single horse in 2003 and is now a farm of 236 acres and over 240 retired race horses and breeding stallions.

The tour takes you around the paddocks to see a handful of horses, almost all of which will eat carrots out of your hand and some of which will even give you kisses or a little cuddle.

The most famous horse we saw was probably Silver Charm, and while we didn’t get a good photo, he gave me smooches.

I can’t wait to go back to Lexington and spend more time with the ponies.