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

Real Life Where's Waldo?

Ok, so this week I was informed about an awesome thing that U-haul does. I'm sure you've all seen their new trucks with the picture on it and some random fact about a place in America. These graphics are not only beautiful to look at, but they all have a hidden picture in them too! U-haul's mascot "Sammy U" is hidden somewhere in every Venture Across America picture. This week at work, a U-haul was parked right outside our window and we literally spent the entire day looking for Sammy U! We finally took to Google to help us because we could not find him anywhere. I ended up tweeting the official U-haul Super Graphics account, who messaged the illustrator of the picture, who gave us a clue. We finally found the little guy but it was so faint on this particular truck that we would have never found it without help. Now I have a mission to find Sammy U on every U-haul truck I see!


Here's a picture of what you're looking for:

Sammy U! Named after U-haul's founder, L. S. "Sam" Shoen

Here's the truck that was parked outside work:

Gary and Maddy looking for Sammy U.

We finally spotted him. As you can see, this was incredibly faint and small. But you can see the "U" and in real life (as in not a picture) you could make out Sammy's head and body.

I love this new adventure I now have! Every time I find a U-haul I am going to look for Sammy U!

Here's a video of someone else finding Sammy U which shows him much better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqK3dtK3YxY

I also recently discovered a cool exhibit on the walk to work. On Baltimore, between 13th and 14th, I noticed these markers. Each of them representated a planet in our solar system. It's actually to scale with Pluto at Union Station and the rest of the planets all the way to 13th Street. Just shows you how far out Pluto was (and maybe why it's not considered a planet anymore!)

Each marker had a planet and some facts about them. One interesting fact was it said I was reading the text by light that had left the sun eight minutes ago! Crazy! So, check it out sometime and learn all about our solar system!

Last week, I tried out another burger place on 39th Street, KC Smoke Burgers. This was a very unique experience! When you first walk in, you notice that everything has been written on with markers. It's rather odd. The smell is also very intense. It smells of wonderful smoked burgers!

We all ordered the cheeseburgers and they came out on little individual smokers! Pretty cool.



I really liked how they marked the buns with KC S for KC Smokeburger. The patties were huge and very flavorful. It almost was too much of the smoky flavor. The fries were excellent. One weird thing, no beer! I just found that to be incredibly odd to have a burger joint and no beer. Oh, well!

Found another fountain this week, hidden inside Power and Light at Main at 13th. It's inside the block, right beside Burger King Whopper Bar.

No. 89- Power and Light- block of Main between 13th and 14th



More adventures to come...Laura

April is for Anniversaries

This month marks the anniversary for Bruce and I together for 7 years!! Wow! It's been seven wonderful and adventurous years at that.

Just a couple of fun things this week. It hockey playoff time and the Preds are doing great! I hosted a hockey brunch last Sunday when they got to play on NBC. We had some delicious chocolate muffins, courtesy of Bree, and I made some sausage/egg breakfast casserole. It was my first try at it and it was very yummy!

I also got to attend my first Royals game of the year with Angie. It was great to be back at the K! Now, of course we all know that the Royals are off to a horrible start, but I still enjoy going to the games. The BEST PART of the whole night, though, was my Escobar getting his first home run of the year!! I love him!

I've already counted these fountains- they are No. 4 on my list!

 Friday night was another Preds game to watch on tv. This time, we went to the Blue Line, an actual hockey bar in river market. Okay, this is my new favorite place ever! They love hockey! It was so much fun to see the Preds eliminate the Red Wings from the playoffs! First time ever. There were even a few Preds fans at the Blue Line- who knew?!? I'm definitely going back to see the Preds in the second round.

Check out this burger I had!!

Two onion rings included! It was SOOOO good!

Myself, Adam and Bree at the Blue Line

I'll definitely be looking to recruit some more people to join in on the Preds bandwagon during this playoff run. All are welcome!

Til next time...Laura

Barney Allis Plaza and KC's Famous Dish Pizza

Tucked in between the Convention Center and Power and Light is a one-block green space called Barney Allis Plaza. There are some beautiful benches to sit and have lunch and of course, a spectacular fountain. This fountain was documented early on in my fountain hunting adventure. In fact, it was my very first documented fountain!

The Barney Allis Plaza Fountain at 12th and Wyandotte:

The park has a tennis court right in the middle, which is home to the Kansas City Explorers World TeamTennis. Did you know this even existed???

And apparently they are the 2010 WORLD CHAMPIONS! I am ashamed to say I did not even know about this!

Looks like their season is in July. I may have to check it out!

Find out more about the Kansas City Explorers: http://www.kcexplorers.com/teams/index.aspx.

Here's a short little time lapse video of the fountain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pl8j-BvLKY.

Anyways, on the south side of the plaza was a picture of the first municipal building in Kansas City and its story:

In 1899, Kansas City built its first convention center. It was very proud of this achievement. They even had John Phillip Sousa come and conduct the opening ceremony. The convention center was going to be the host of the Democratic Convention but three months before the convention, the center was burned to the ground. Everyone assumed the Convention would have to be moved to another city but the city and people rallied and built a new center in less than 90 days in time! This building stood until the 1970's when the current larger Bartle Hall was constructed.

KC's Municipal Auditorium

Right across the street is the Convention Center

A view of the iconic spears of the convention center



So, it was pretty awesome to discover this neat park downtown,  and learn some more history about the convention center. Tonight, I discovered another wonderful Kansas City treasure: The Dish Famous Deep Dish Pizza.

I saw this pizza at Cosentino's and tried it out. It was delicious!! You have to like deep dish pizza to like it but the best part is it boasts to be the only locally handmade frozen pizza in KC.

Delicious!

Thanks for reading. I would love to hear if anyone else has been to the Barney Allis Plaza or tried the Dish Famous Deep Dish Pizza!

Til next time...Laura

Catching Up and Looking Forward

Tomorrow is Fountains Day. That means is Fountain Hunting Season again! I am going to be posting more frequently but lately I just wasn't in the mood. It's tough because I have a very busy schedule with school and work but I will make time to fill you in on exciting adventures.

So, I'm just going to show you a few pictures from the last three months and here we go...

Back in January, I took a tour of Kansas City's local brewery, Boulevard Brewery, located just southwest of downtown on Southwest Boulevard. The name Boulevard comes from all the beautiful boulevards and parkways that the city has. I love Boulevard because they are local, hugely successful and are very environmentally aware. They do some pretty innovative things when it comes to their business and being green. They said they are a zero landfill company.

Melissa and Josie on her first beer tour! She's starting early.

An overview of the bottling line. Unfortunately, no one was working that Saturday!

Got some samples after the tour. Boulevard makes a few different kinds that I'll actually drink and enjoy.

Bree and Melissa

Adam, Drew, Melissa, Dan and Bree

So over the past couple months, I also got pretty obsessed with Mizzou Tigers basketball. This is Dan and Jessica celebrating after MU beat KU in February.

I discovered an awesome urban garden at 18th and Broadway. It demonstrates how cities can be green. It's awesome!

Because I have one of the greatest roommates ever, I also got to see Mizzou win their final Big 12 men's basketball tournament! So awesome!

I'm going to wrap it because I'm tired. But thanks for reading!
til next time...Laura