Oh nooooo I had two paragraphs of this written and then changed computers and it disappeared! Shucks gosh darn it.
Well, I’m not going to rewrite those two paragraphs. Long story short: I took a whirlwind, long overdue weekend trip to Kansas City to visit my pal Hannah (half of the amazing Florence for Free team). If that girl isn’t getting a cut from the KC tourism board, she should be! Not only did she talk up KC until I came to visit, but she took me on a world class city tour. And obviously, we ate a lot.
So when I say a whirlwind trip, this is what I mean: hop a flight after work on a Friday and arrive in KC around 9pm or so, see the city Saturday, and then Sunday evening back on the plane to go home. We packed a TON in, but there’s definitely stuff I didn’t get to see. Also, we attempted to ghost hunt at (by which I mean: go into the lobby of) a hotel I can’t remember the name of that is supposedly haunted, but we were thwarted by not being able to find the entrance. (There was construction and remodeling, okay? It was confusing). The point it, we packed a lot in, but there’s enough to warrant a return trip. (Pics were taken on my crappy cell phone camera and are, apparently, super low resolution. Sorry).
The Roasterie, Kansas City.
Saturday morning we “slept in” until about 8 am (sadly, this is sleeping in for both of us). Knowing we had a full schedule, our first stop of the day was The Roasterie. The Roasterie is a specialty coffee roasting company based in KC that air roasts their beans. Tours of their roasting facility are available, so we coffee’ed up and learned about coffee beans and roasts. The tour was really fun and informative, and the tour guide did a fantastic job.
OH MY GOD I just opened this to finish and the draft didn’t save the last five paragraphs I wrote! This is probably a combo of WordPress apparently not autosaving and me being an idiot and forgetting to save before exiting. This post is cursed. Clearly. Or maybe it is a sign I should just sit down and write it and not take three weeks, but STILL.
Out of frustration, the rest of this post will be bullet points.
Me getting excited about the menu at Joe’s.
- Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que: It is delicious, it is in the back of a gas station, and it is on Anthony Bourdain’s list of places to eat before you die. Go eat there. Yum. French fries also v. good.
View from Liberty Memorial.
- Liberty Memorial: Great view of the city. LOTS of wedding parties taking pictures. Windy.
Interior of Union Station, Kansas City.
- Union Station: Cool old train station with bullet hole souvenirs from the mob. (OR ARE THEY?)
- Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Giant lawn full of shuttlecocks (hehe), good for laying out. Also: art in the museum. Nice collection. Rembrandt!
Shuttlecock! At the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City.
- Bella Napoli: Honestly some of the best tiramisu I’ve ever had. And I really love tiramisu.
- Kansas City Public Library: Coolest parking garage ever. EVER. You have probably seen pictures of it before on random internet articles with titles like “Top 10 Libraries You Won’t Believe!” or some such. It is pretty awesome though.
- There was one more place we ate at, but unfortunately I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the place. It had a lot of crazy interesting food and flavor combos. We got these wide, thin cut fries that came with guacamole ketchup (delicious), vanilla ketchup (interesting), and blood orange ketchup (it was red. Also, I still don’t know if I liked it or not).
Kansas City Public Library.
Now I am going to physically hit save, and when I go home tonight I will upload photos that will probably be of dubious quality because they were taken on my phone, and publish.
Update: Photos have been added, but I can’t be bothered to fix the formatting, because my frustration level with this post is at an unhealthy level.
The Grand Em 