Hello, y’all! Today we’re continuing with another travel post from our St. Louis trip. After spending 5 days in St. Louis, mainly while Rob was attending a conference, we were ready to explore some other nearby cities. In the last travel post, you can see we basically ate our way through St. Louis and then made our way to Kansas City. On our way there we stopped in Columbia, MO to see Mizzou.

After about 2 more hours in the car, we arrived in Kansas City, checked into our hotel, and got to bed after a long day.

The next morning, we were excited to get up and start exploring the city. It was looking kind of dreary and was supposed to rain. We decided the best place to start was somewhere inside.

Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has been on Rob’s baseball bucket list. It was a nice museum with tons of information and memorabilia. We learned so much. They don’t really allow photos to be taken, but I was bad and snapped a few to share here. I wasn’t the only one, believe me!

There is also the American Jazz Museum located in the same building. You can pay for both museums at a discounted rate or of course, just pay for one museum. We didn’t go into the Jazz museum this time.

This is a cool mural just outside of the museum.

After leaving there, the weather was still gloomy, but the radar showed it should be clearing up. We drove around the area where the museum is located called Historic 18th & Vine Jazz District. This is actually across the street from the museum. The Gem is a 1912 theater with a vintage marquee & a modernized interior hosting jazz & other live music acts.

We started seeing these hearts through out Kansas City, which were pretty cool. We saw this first one near where we parked in the Jazz District.

Downtown Kansas City

From there we decided to go ahead to downtown. We parked in the Power and Light district.

Kansas City is known as the City of Fountains, so I wanted to see a few of them. We looked on Google Maps and saw that there are a few fountains downtown. We parked closest to the Power and Light District Fountain. However, when we got over there we were bummed to see it was turned off and drained.

There found twox Kansas City hearts right in that area.

This Kansas City Royals ‘sculpture’ is made from beer cans if you look closely!

The next fountain we walked to was the Muse of The Missouri Fountain. It’s out in the median on Main Street.

This one is called Harvester KC Sculpture and Fountain was a little difficult to find. You enter into a corider area inside the UMB Bank building at the Walnut and E 11th Street corner.

Interestingly enough, while taking pictures of it and the security guard inside the bank came out and told us the sculpture is copyrighted so no pictures allowed. However, there was not a single sign around. I told him I would delete my pics, but he said he didn’t care. It’s just his job to tell people. haha!

We were getting hungry and decided to walk over to a recommended restaurant for some Kansas City BBQ. Here’s some pics I took along the way.

RideKC Street Car

We heard that one of the best places for Kansas City BBQ was Jack Stack BBQ Freight House.

Onion rings – Hand-breaded, Sweet Colossal Onions

The Pitmaster – Pork Spare Ribs, Beef & Pork Burnt Ends + Sausage, Fire-Kissed Wings

After walking back to our car from lunch, we drove around the downtown area a little more.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Same place different side…Such a cool building

Other Kansas City Spots

Then we drove over to Penn Valley Park and the National WWI Museum and Memorial.

Really nice view of city from there.

Rob drove me over to the Children’s Fountain, which was a really whimsical and large fountain that I was so happy to get to see.

We needed to get back to the hotel so we could leave for the ballgame, but Rob decided to drive over near the Country Club Plaza to see another fountain or two. This was in front of the Season 52 restaurant.

We also drove by this Fountain in Mill Creek Park (more info), which was another amazing fountain.

Really cute mural

Kauffman Stadium home of the KC Royals

Anytime we go to a new stadium, we walk the entire thing and check it all out.

They had a bunch of cool things for kids to do.

View from our seats

Love this view from behind the fountains in the batter’s eye

Museum

We really enjoyed the game even though the Royals lost. Nice stadium with lots of cool photo opps.

If you made it all the way down to the end, you rock! This was one my epically long posts, but I’m trying to get done with this trip’s travel posts. I still have 2 weeks worth of cruise pics go through/edit and cruise posts to write!