The Ambitious Odometer: Tennessee

Friday, December 26, 2025

{Girls Trip} - Nutcracker 2025 - Nutcracker Ballet in Cincinnati, OH - Day 1

For year E L E V E N of our annual girls' trip to see the Nutcracker, we took on Cincinnati, Ohio! I continue to be so thankful for these girls and the tradition we hold so dear, but even more so for the memories we've been given because of it...

After five years in Atlanta at the historic Fox Theatre (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 & 2019) and then three Covid+ years at The Greenbrier (2020, 2021 & 2022), in 2023 I decided to switch things up and took our show on the road with Miami City Ballet's production in West Palm Beach in 2023 and Nashville Ballet's production in Nashville in 2024.

This year, we decided to head to Ohio to check out Cincinnati Ballet's production. We left early this morning and stopped for a bit at the bicycle arch in Knoxville, TN...

before continuing on to Lexington, KY...

for lunch at Carson's on Main...

and, it was delicious...

From there, we continued on to Cincinnati and checked into the fun Graduate Cincinnati hotel...

Graduate Hotels are found in college towns and typically take on the look and feel of each individual town. The Cincinnati location is actually located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati and has decor that honors local celebrity hippo, Fiona, plus various other icons unique to the city...

One of my favorite details is the student ID room keys. Check out Travis!

Once we got settled, we walked over to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden to see some lights and a few animals, too!

I had really hoped to see Fiona, but she wasn't out when we checked in. You see, Fiona, feels like an old friend, as in the very early days of the pandemic, we watched the Facebook LIVE videos that the Cincinnati Zoo did, and Fiona was their first (on the first school day we were home)!

So, it just felt right to visit a place that did what it could to bring some normalcy to our household and many others during such an unprecedented time...

Plus, it's been a minute since we visited a zoo for fun!

We spent about 3 hours walking through and then headed back to our hotel, just a 10-minute walk away, where we grabbed dinner and a fun drink in the holiday popup, Tinsel Haus!