2 nights against 2.10 hours: reserve a 2 night Indianapolis trip from Cincinnati

Two nights at the end of a morning drive

Reserve a 2 night Indianapolis trip from Cincinnati and the numbers are settled before anything else is. The road measures 108.5 miles. The wheel takes 2.1 hours in one direction. The office books two nights at the far end of it. Divide the hours by the nights and each night carries 1.05 hours of driving. On this list that is the second of four steps, and the office calls it what it is. The road is a morning.

The second step is where a stay begins to pay for itself. A car that leaves Cincinnati after breakfast is parked in Indianapolis with the afternoon still whole, and the same road on the way home sits between a late start and dinner. There is no mountain grade to plan around, one state line to cross, and no change of clock: the hour in Indianapolis reads the same as the hour in Cincinnati.

From $420 per person covers the two nights and the items listed further down this page. It does not cover the drive. The office prints the drive first so that nobody discovers it afterward.

A center built around one circle

Downtown Indianapolis is a plain grid with a paved circle set in the middle of it and a limestone monument standing in the circle. Diagonal avenues cut across the grid and run into that circle, which is why a walk between two downtown addresses is often shorter than the grid suggests. Steps and an elevator go up inside the monument, and the view from the top explains the whole layout in about a minute.

West of the circle a straightened canal runs through downtown with a paved walk along both banks, ending at a green park on the White River. The museums on that stretch, the zoo on the west bank and the lawns behind it sit close enough together that one parking spot serves an entire day.

North of the center the neighborhoods are older and quieter: brick commercial blocks, an art museum with wooded grounds running down to the river, and a paved greenway laid along an old track bed that carries walkers most of the way up the north side.

How two nights get filled

The first afternoon is usually a walking one. The car is left where it sleeps, and the circle, the memorial lawns north of it and the diagonal avenue running northeast from them cover the rest of the daylight. That avenue holds most of the older theaters and the restaurants that grew up beside them.

The full day in the middle is the one worth settling in advance, because the obvious versions of it pull in different directions. The art museum and its grounds make a north side day. The oval track on the west side makes a west side day; a museum sits inside the oval, and the grounds are open to visitors outside race week. The canal, the river park and the museums along them make a downtown day that needs no driving at all.

The second morning is short by design. A glass conservatory and a set of sunken gardens sit in a park on the south side, near the interstate that goes home, which makes them the last thing seen rather than the thing squeezed in before the road.

What the road shows

The way up leaves Cincinnati on the northwest side, crosses the Whitewater River near the state line and then runs almost straight for the remainder. Southeastern Indiana begins wooded and folded, with shallow valleys the highway cuts through rather than follows.

After Batesville the land flattens into glacial farm country and stays that way. Greensburg comes next, and the courthouse tower there carries trees growing out of the stonework near the top, visible from the highway for anyone who knows to look. Shelbyville follows, then the outer loop of the city and the exits into it.

None of this is hard driving. Two lanes each way for most of the run, gentle grades, and a last quarter that is suburban rather than rural. Drivers who dislike the dark should note only that the flat country west of Batesville offers very little to look at once the light goes.

Where Go Air Travels stops

Go Air Travels is a reservations office at 35 East Seventh Street in Cincinnati. It books rooms and it measures roads. It arranges no transport of any kind, and it stands independent of every place it books, which is why no company is named anywhere on this page.

The narrowness is deliberate. The office quotes the road first, in miles and hours it has driven, and only then offers the bed at the end of it. A traveler who would rather not spend 2.1 hours at the wheel is told plainly that this office has nothing else for Indianapolis.

Requests are made in writing and answered in writing. Nothing is held until that written confirmation goes out, and no payment is taken on this site.

When this one is worth the road

The road is short enough that no month rules this stay out, and the office books it in February as readily as in June. Two windows are worth naming anyway. Late September into the middle of October puts dry weather over the canal and the north side grounds, which is when the walking half of these two nights is easiest. The last weekend of May is the one the office keeps clear: the city turns itself over to the race on the west side, downtown rooms behave unlike themselves, and a drive that is a morning in March stops being one. Requests for that weekend come back with a different date offered.

Does the office arrange the drive?

No. The car belongs to the traveler and so does the driving. Go Air Travels measures the road, 108.5 miles and 2.1 hours in one direction, and books the bed at the end of it. Nothing about the journey itself is arranged here.

Why does the entry print hours for each night?

Because a road only reads as short when it is set against the time spent at the far end. Two nights against 2.1 hours gives 1.05 hours of road for each night, which is the second of four steps on this list: the road is a morning. The number is printed before a reservation is made, not after.

Is insurance part of the price?

No. Insurance sits outside what this office does; it is neither sold nor advised on here. The price covers two nights of lodging, the tax on the room and the parking that goes with it.