Many of us have travel bucket lists, maybe including wows like New York, the Grand Canyon, Paris, a non-Western country, an African safari.
Cincinnati probably doesn’t make your list. Neither did it mine until a brief visit to my two early-20s nieces, who each landed her first post-college job there. I intend to go back. Because of an aunt’s funeral, my sister Pat and I had to cut short our visit. We didn’t get to the top attraction on my list, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. There wasn’t time for a tour of Over-the-Rhine, whose more than 1,000 historic buildings make up one of the country’s largest, most intact 19th-century historic districts. Both attractions meet my criterion for worth seeing: one of a kind, or nearly so.
That outing reminded me that there are unvisited places within driving distance of Chicago that would interest me. After a trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in September, I expect to be content to take less breathtaking vacations nearby.