Start from 52 curated places around Lincoln, NE, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
DISH
A chef-driven contemporary American room downtown with a menu that shifts around what is in season and local. It is Lincoln's go-to for a real special-occasion dinner, with a James Beard-nominated kitchen behind it.
The Oven
Lincoln's long-running Indian restaurant in the Haymarket, working a tandoor for North Indian classics alongside a few Bhutanese dishes you won't find elsewhere in town. The patio overlooking the rail yard is one of the better outdoor tables downtown.
Trails & outdoors
Pioneers Park Nature Center
A 668-acre preserve on the southwest edge of town with about eight miles of mostly flat trails through tallgrass prairie, woodland, and along a creek. Bison, elk, and deer enclosures and a nature interpretive center make it the easy family-with-kids choice.
Wilderness Park
A long ribbon of bottomland forest along Salt Creek with roughly 22 miles of unpaved trail, the closest thing in Lincoln to actually being lost in the woods. The main loop runs over 11 miles and is the city's serious running and trail-riding ground.
Things to do
Zoo Bar
A narrow, legendary blues and roots club that's been booking touring acts in the same downtown room for decades, one of the longest-running blues bars in the country. Touring blues and Americana musicians still treat a stop here as a rite of passage.
Bourbon Theatre
A restored O Street theater that's the main mid-size concert room downtown, booking rock, indie, hip-hop, and country across its main floor and smaller back bar. It's where you catch national touring acts on a club-size stage.
Landmarks & sights
Nebraska State Capitol
The only skyscraper state capitol in the country, a 400-foot Art Deco tower locals call the Tower on the Plains. Free hourly guided tours cover the mosaic-tiled rotunda and the legislative chamber, and the 14th-floor observation deck is the best free overlook in the city.
Sunken Gardens
A terraced annual garden built into a former neighborhood dump during the Depression, replanted each year around a new theme with tens of thousands of plants. The koi pond and stone stairways make it a slow-stroll spot rather than a quick photo stop.