Giving some love to hidden tourist attractions on Valentine's Day
- alanafrew
- Feb 17, 2015
- 3 min read
When it comes to Valentine's Day, I'm easy to please. For the past year or two, my boyfriend, Kyle, and I have stopped giving each other gifts for the holiday because really, do we need giant boxes of chocolates for ourselves? We've also stopped having dinner on Valentine's Day because we refuse to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a dinner that isn't normally worth that much (especially as college students). In general, the holiday is an excuse to make us spend too much money on things we don't need. If you want to see a humorous look at Valentine's Day, Jim Gaffigan's segment from CBS Sunday Morning is your answer.
At the same time, you also don't want to do absolutely nothing on Valentine's Day, especially when we are more aware of what other people are doing on social media. This year, I gave Kyle a better option that would make us both happy: Visit places he's never been to. What I didn't realize until a few days later was that the attractions we went to were hidden gems. Though it's past Valentine's Day, this blog post is dedicated to the lesser-known tourist attractions in Greater Cincinnati and the love they deserve.
First up was the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Museum. Though many would argue that this isn't really hidden, not that many people take the time to go there, especially this time of year. Kyle and I sort of knew about the museum for many years, but never visited until this Valentine's Day.
There were so many things to look at throughout the museum that I had a hard time believing they had some of the stuff they had saved, like baseballs, jerseys, mitts and even bases from certain games. There was so much to learn from one museum and for any baseball history fan or even a Cincinnatian, you really have to visit this museum. Did I mention you can get tickets to go on Great American Ball Park stadium tours here? Had it not been snowing with the wind gusts as much as 50 mph., we would have done it that day.
After that, we got Yard House for lunch, which most people do visit when they go to The Banks development downtown, but not so much this time of year. This is a dead time of the year for these restaurants since there aren't Reds or Bengals games. There are cyclones games going on, but U.S. Bank Arena is still a trek from The Banks, especially this time of year. If you've been wanting to try Yard House, Tin Roof, Ruth's Chris or any other restaurant down there, you shouldn't have too much of a hard time finding a seat. Though some of these places are more fun during the summer when you can sit outside and look at the river, the food is worth having for during the cold months.
After Yardhouse, we decided to use the tickets I bought for the American Sign Museum on my LivingSocial app. If you don't have something like Groupon or LivingSocial, you're really missing out on deals to local attractions, with some of these being hidden gems.
My first time at the American Sign Museum was last month during an event. The place basically does no advertising at all and depends on visitors to spread the word. However, they don't have trouble with that since the place is a work of art and there's so much history behind each sign. Many people like to have events, especially weddings there and I really don't see why you wouldn't. It's a fund space filled with beautiful lights and there's a big room that's great for tables and a dance floor. Though the place isn't that big, you can spend a lot of time looking at each sign, some of which you may recognize that are from local establishments that have passed on, including the famous Clifton pizza place for many years, Papa Dino's.
Kyle loved the places we went to and though we didn't have a traditional Valentine's Day, we had a great time supporting these attractions that really deserve some attention. This is probably the most memorable Valentine's Day I've ever had because it wasn't the same thing and I think I want to do something similar next year. :)
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