Kansas City tourism

Kansas City has got to be one of the friendliest places I’ve been to. Everyone around you is smiling and is more than considerate and helpful. For example, I found myself shopping in a 'mall' and memorised by the aisles and aisles of yellow cheeses that I would be in everyone's way. However, people would keep apologising to me for trying to get by, even though I was in the wrong. It’s definitely a place I want to return to one day to explore more.

Together with my puppet partner in crime, Jeff, we found some time to explore the city sites and also found some Aussie beer - FOSTERS! Apparently, all Americans think that ALL Australians drink Fosters.
I found this so funny. I would try to explain: “No, you’d actually have a hard time finding a bar that would even serve Fosters in Australia!” Several people I’ve met now have been extremely shocked by this statement - as if I'd just told them Santa Claus didn’t exist. When I try to tell them that it was only made for export, they really thought I was lying.

So, I thought I'd share just one of the ads that airs in the US. This gives you a bit of an idea of what Americans think of Australians...

Anyway, back to Kansas City...


Food was fantastic. Jeff took me for a ‘real American’ experience - to a ‘drive-in’ restaurant called Sonic. It was just like in the movies! You sit in your car and order and they bring the food out on a special tray that sits on your window so you can eat in the comfort of your own car. How lazy is that? You don’t even need to get up!

We also went to a real American pizza place called Joe's Pizza Buy the Slice. This was so cool, it felt like we were in an American sitcom. It had a great vibe with hearty blues music in the back ground and a real cruisey fellow serving you and having an "ole' chat with ya."

For lunch we hung out at a sandwich bar called Panera Bread where when you ask for 'chips' as a side, you get a packet of chips! I found this facinating.

Joe's Pizza Buy Slice
image: http://www.urbanspoon.com

We also did a bit of site seeing - however, oddly enough, several things that I had planned back in Australia to see while I was in KO such as big Barbie museum and the Puppet Museum were closed.

Being a sweltering 40+ degree heat - it was the perfect weather to enjoy ice cream. To my delight we saw shops, cafes and even second-hand clothes stores (called “thrift stores” in America) displaying signs that boldly said “Ice Cream here!”.

However, on further investigation every one of them was out of ice cream. But not just out of ice cream but apparently NONE of them sold ice cream on Mondays... It was very strange, very strange indeed. There seems to be some sort of ice cream strike or something there on weekends... I don't know. Maybe life just kind of stops on Mondays in Kansas City and people don't go to work... Actually, that doesn't seem like such a bad idea!

So we stumbled onto a great big university with great big old buildings which was interesting. All the architecture here is quite beautiful and old, sorry I don't have more pictures - but here are some of the buildings we saw.

But all in all, Kansas City (however I think it's also the whole Mid-West area of the country) was a beautiful place all round, beautiful city and people and I'm looking forward to coming back again.