Money Museum, Central Library and more!

Lots of things to blog about today. This summer is shaping up to be a very fun one-- even if I don't get to take a vacation!

Yesterday was a super fun start to the summer. JJ and I had a wonderful lunch on the patio at Cafe Trio. The patio has a great view of the Nichols Fountain on the Plaza (minus the parking lot-ha!)

I had the Mac Daddy and it was DELICIOUS! The salad was also wonderful, it had the best dressing. Maybe my favorite part of the lunch were the two guys sitting at the table next to us. Both had the most adorable Australian accents!  It was impossible not to eavesdrop! :)

Then, we went to the Money Museum, which is just inside the Federal Reserve Bank at Main and Grand. This is a nice little museum with free parking and admission. We learned that the Federal Reserve bank is like the supervisor of all the banks in the region. They make sure all the banks have plenty of cash. We got to see part of the cash servicing area and watched workers package up millions and millions of dollars. They also had some robots that carried around the money and they were named Huey, Dewey and Louie!

Of course, this big, important building in KC, which was built in 2008, has a beautiful fountain right out front! Here's Fountain No. 91!

The Museum had lots of old coins and examples of different currencies, from what they used as colonies to Confederate money. They even had a real gold bar valued at over $688,000!

Every visitor to the Museum gets a free bag of cash!

Today, I visited the Central branch of the KC Public Library, right downtown. It is beautiful! Even the parking garage is cool!

Here's the entrance to the children's section.

The building used to be a bank. Here's a picture of how it was as a bank and now the beautiful library lobby.

Downstairs, instead of a vault for the Bank, it's a vault full of movies to rent!

There was an exhibit of wood-carved pictures from Missouri native, Fred Geary. Mr. Geary was an artist who worked for the Fred Harvey Company, designing postcards and book covers and all sorts of things for the hospitality company. He also did all these beautiful woodcuts in the 1930 and 40s. Many were Missouri landmarks, like this picture below of Jesse James' house.

Here's one more fountain to add, No. 90. This is a beautiful fountain right on the Plaza on 47th St. It's pretty cool how the water shoots out of the horses' noses.

That's all for now, more adventures to come! Laura