On Friday Kara and I packed up our car and drove to Cincinnati to watch our Rockies take on the Reds at Great American Ballpark. Since Cincinnati is less than five hours from St. Louis, we decided this would be a fairly easy ballpark to check off our bucket list. The added bonus was seeing the Rockies seal the win, 6-3. Eight stadiums down, twenty-two to go!
Here’s a few things we noticed during our visit to Great American Ballpark…
- If you arrive early, check out the open plaza on the southwest side of the park. Jugglers, magicians, and all sorts of fun attractions are there to help pass the time until the gates open. The Reds team shop on the south side of the plaza has story after story of Reds trivia, apparel, and lots of other fun collectibles inside, not to mention the three-story tall baseball bats that double as pillars inside.
- If you’re looking for good food, you could do worse than Skyline Chili. Their specialty is their chili dog but they have other options as well. The chili dog may look gnarly to the eyes but it was great on the taste buds.
- Parking can be kinda tricky with the river blocking off one whole side of the stadium so keep a heads-up for a good deal that you might get only one block west of the highway by the park.
- Since Cincinnati is on the Kentucky border (and the Cincy airport is actually in Kentucky), we found that hotels were much cheaper around the airport than in Cincinnati.
All in all, we enjoyed our visit to Great American Ballpark. It’s not the flashiest ballpark or the most iconic but I’d give it a 6 out of 10. Hey, they can’t all be Coors Field! Here’s to checking another one off the list.
