midnight at jardines

our second day in Kansas City proved to be quite a history-packed fun time. We started off by heading out toward the town of Independence and visited Truman's home and a jail that Jesse James did a stint in. After a wonderful tour by an Alaskan park ranger who knew one of the NJ Devils, we headed on over to the Truman Presidential Library. After a while, paying $10-$15 for each and every exhibit gets really old, and so we didn't feel like paying to go into a library that we weren't going to borrow a book from. So we stepped inside, took a quick peek around and then took off.

Back in KC, we headed straight for the much touted, long awaited, KC BBQ. We went to the original, Arthur Bryants. The original one that we went to was located in the northwestern section of the city, and somewhat oddly, there were no other viable businesses in the area but the place was PACKED at a few hours after the mid-day lunch at 2 pm. It was basically a fast food joint (as opposed to a sit down place). We ran into the YES Network Yankee Roadtrippers there and traded a few "Go Yankees" cheers. I doubt we'll be on, but we did have to sign a release. The BBQ was fantastic, even though we're in meat country and I didn't order a sandwich. I had some french fries, which I was able to use as sticks for picking up BBQ sauce.

After that, we had some time to kill before the game, so we went down to the Plaza to grab a few brews at the Classic Cup Cafe. It had a hip trendy atmosphere and a great bartender named Curtis, who gave us a few tips about getting to and from the game and where to go afterward. So we headed up to Royals Land, watched the Yankees batting practice and cheered along with the rest of the 10,000 Yankee fans who infiltrated the Royals stadium as A-Rod hit his 499 home run. We sat next to a couple from rural Iowa who were big Yankee fans and talked about them visiting NY next year for the last year in classic Yankee Stadium. It was a great time.

From there, we headed over to a jazz club called Jardines for a nightcap. A few more beers and some great jazz music at a local haunt. After last call, we called it a night as we had a long drive ahead of us to St. Louis.

*k*