What's a good 3-day itinerary for Louisville?

Day 1 stays within a 10-block stretch of Main Street, where the sidewalks smell like charring oak from the barrel houses on Whiskey Row. The Louisville Slugger Museum opens at 9am and the factory tour runs 30 minutes. You'll hear the crack of ash bats on the turning lathe before you see them. From there it's a 4-minute walk east to the Muhammad Ali Center, which opened in 2005 and needs 90 minutes minimum for the second-floor multimedia galleries. Lunch at Doc Crow's on the same block gets you a hot brown for $18, Louisville's signature open-face turkey sandwich slathered in Mornay sauce and broiled until the cheese blisters. Afternoon belongs to Whiskey Row. Old Forester's distillery tour at 2pm costs $22 and finishes with a tasting flight. Walk the Big Four Bridge at sunset, a pedestrian span to Indiana with the city skyline behind you and river air that's 3-4 degrees cooler than the pavement downtown.

Day 2 starts in NuLu, the East Market District along East Market Street between Shelby and Clay. Breakfast at Please & Thank You by 8:30am. It's a record shop that sells chocolate-chip cookies the size of your palm alongside pourover coffee. The Butchertown neighborhood begins two blocks north. Rabbit Hole Distillery opens at 10am, $20 for the Hedonism tour with four pours in a building that smells like caramel and toasted grain. Lunch at Butchertown Grocery at noon. The pimento cheese is made in-house and the fried chicken sandwich runs $16. Afternoon at the Louisville Mega Cavern, a 17-acre former limestone mine kept at a constant 15°C year-round, which in June heat that currently feels like 33°C is reason enough. The underground bike park is $30 for two hours. Dinner at Mayan Cafe on East Market at 7pm. Their rotating pepian is Guatemalan-rooted and uses Kentucky-grown heirloom corn.

Day 3 heads south. The Speed Art Museum on South Third Street opens at 10am, free on Sundays, $18 otherwise. The contemporary wing's light wells throw slabs of morning sun across the concrete floors. Walk 10 minutes south into Old Louisville's St. James Court, the largest concentration of Victorian homes in the United States, with 1,400 structures packed into roughly 45 blocks. Cave Hill Cemetery, founded in 1848, sits 3 km northeast by rideshare. Colonel Sanders and Muhammad Ali are both buried there, and the grounds feel more like a botanical garden than a graveyard. Afternoon at Churchill Downs, a $5 general admission on non-race days gets you into the Kentucky Derby Museum for the 360-degree film. Dinner at Jack Fry's on Bardstown Road in the Highlands at 7:30pm. The shrimp and grits plate is $32 and has been on the menu since the 1990s.

Practical notes for June. Afternoons hit 30°C with 70% humidity, and thunderstorms roll in without much warning. Carry a packable rain jacket. The heat makes morning starts essential. Louisville is a car city, but Days 1 and 2 are entirely walkable if you stay within the downtown-NuLu corridor. Day 3 needs a rideshare for the Cave Hill and Churchill Downs legs, roughly $8-12 each way via Lyft. TARC bus route 4 connects downtown to the Highlands along Broadway for $1.75 if you prefer transit. Total walking across all three days is about 22 km, with Day 1 being the longest at roughly 9 km.