A giant window keeps guests from the big birds, but a video gives more than enough sense of the ruckus the penguins can make. Other exhibits also lead to laughter as well as learning. But a short trip just to the riverfront holds plenty of possibilities. Officials hope to convert a river bridge to pedestrian-only use within a few years, but for now, visitors can take the Southbank Shuttle, which carries people in a loop through Covington, Newport and Cincinnati, all for 25 cents a trip. Newport and Covington each have floating restaurants and riverboats, and while Newport has the aquarium, Covington has welcomed full-service Embassy Suites and Marriott hotels and the Northern Kentucky Convention Center to the river.
More development is on the way.
The bell is part of the proposed Millennium Monument, a 1,000-foot proposed observation tower. New attractions are joined by a sense of history. Newport's East Row historic district is the second-largest in Kentucky, and the Roebling Suspension Bridge linking Covington to Cincinnati was the model for the Brooklyn Bridge. All of this is a far cry from the mid-1980s, when many people came to the Northern Kentucky riverfront just for cheap parking and walked to Cincinnati, said Barbara Dozier, vice president of sales and marketing for the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau. Now it's a model.