Kansas City: Day 1

I'm going to blog about our Kansas City trip over a few days since I have so many photos to share (btw, some are from the Sony Point & Shoot, others are from the Canon D-SLR). Today, will be about our first day in Kansas City - Friday, June 3.

"I'm goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come..."

We actually left for our KC trip Thursday night, but only went about half way, spending the night in Des Moines. This allowed us to break the trip up over a few days so it wasn't such a long drive, and allowed us to do some sight seeing on Friday before the game. Thursday night we got in to Des Moines around 11 pm, checked in, and went to sleep. The next morning (Friday), we had breakfast and then were on our way to KC. We got there around 12:30, and went straight to Oklahoma Joe's for lunch, which is on the Kansas side of Kansas City. The line was long- out the door. It took us an hour to get our food, but it was well worth it. I will be blogging more about each of the bbq places we went to in a later post.

BBQ meal #1 - Oklahoma Joe's

After lunch, and a quick stop at the liquor store to get Adam some Boulevard, we explored Union Station in downtown Kansas City.

photo by Adam

Photo by Adam

Then we navigated to Clark's Point, a Lewis and Clark Memorial.

After quite a few photos, it was getting to be time to head to the hotel. Check-in was at 4, so we left at about 3:45. We barely were on the Interstate (I-70) before traffic came to a grinding halt. We sat there, not moving, not even an inch, for half an hour. I looked up on my phone and discovered there was a bad accident, and the Interstate was closed. Finally they opened up the far lane for traffic to get through. That was a rather frustrating experience, but not nearly as frustrating as what lay ahead for us at the hotel. I HATE Holiday Inn.

We arrived at 4:30, and were told that our room wasn't ready. Wait - what? Check-in is at 4 pm? Apparently there were a lot of guests and rooms weren't clean yet. The front desk told us to "go get a bite to eat or have a drink at the bar, and then check back." Yeah... except we were going to the 7:10 game, had never seen Kauffman before, and wanted to be early. Plus we had all our luggage with us since we parked far away (the lot was packed). They wouldn't say how long of a wait it would be. So we dragged all of our luggage into the business center and waited. Then we waited some more. Around 5:30, Adam went to check again. Still no room. Really? We were quite angry by this time. We needed to get changed for the game, and were hoping to freshen up. Instead, we had to take turns changing in the public restroom. Finally, at 6 pm, when we still didn't have a room, we dragged all of our luggage back out to the car (how safe...) and waited for the shuttle to the stadium. Unfortunately, this meant we were kind of in a bad mood. However, Kauffman stadium was AWESOME!!!

Pavano pitching

 View from our seats

Ketchup, Mustard and Relish race! I wish Target field had this instead of the animated ones.

We loved our seats that were in the section behind the Royals dugout. This wasn't the greatest for photos because of the netting, but it was nice to be close. The only annoying part was the fans that kept throwing peanuts at our backs...

Later in the game, we got up to walk around and take some photos.

This is what the fountain looks like during game play

On our way back to our seats, we were followed and taunted by a 10-12 year old kid and his father for about 5 minutes. It was sooo weird. He started by saying, "Excuse me. No offense, but the Twins are going to lose." They actually were winning at that point (7th inning), we ignored and kept walking. Then him and his dad got right behind us and the kid kept saying, "The Twins are going to lose. They're going to lose so bad they'll go cry to their mom's. Then they'll go cry in their toilets." After a few minutes of this, I turned around and said politely, "Can you stop following us?" Apparently this was HILARIOUS to the dad, as he almost fell over laughing. They continued to follow saying, "It's a free country" and other nonsense. They finally went away when we entered our section. It was so bizarre and irritating!

Kauffman only has one big screen, but it is HUGE

Casilla at bat

Twins win! 5-2

Twins WON!!! After the game we watched the Friday night fireworks. They were really cool.

taken with the trusty Cybershot

Then we decided to walk back to our hotel as it was a really short walk and had cooled off a lot.

blurry look back at the stadium (taken with the Cybershot), but you get the idea

When we returned, we finally got the keys to our room. Got up there, and it was 2 queens instead of a king and the A/C was terribly noisy. WONDERFUL. So yes, the hotel experience wasn't the best, but we still had a great time.