Kansas City Recap Part 3

A new day, a new adventure!  I woke up bright and early, ready to take the day on...then I realized it was STILL RAINING. Ugh, so tired of the rain!!  This is a statue as tall as me made out of legos!!!  I started off in Crown Center, a commercial complex with lots of stores. None that I'd really want to shop in, but still. Its anchored by Hallmark and even has a department store-like called Halls (owned by Hallmark).

This is the global HQ of Hallmark, so I obviously had to check out the visitor's center.  

It was pretty tiny, but was kind of neat to see all of the cards across the decades and to see how they corresponded to what was going on in the world at the time. 

The presidential cards that sitting presidents and VPs sent people.

Apparently JC Hall loved Christmas so much, every year his employees would craft a christmas tree decked to the halls in a certain theme. Who doesn't love a good theme party?!?!?

I went outside and saw the Crown Center fountains, every hour these fountains go off and music blares while "49 water jets and 48 water shooters spout up to 60 feet in the air, before coming back to a 37,500 -gallon underground reservoir. Water is recycled into the fountain at a rate of 2,200 gallons per minute." Kanas City is know as the "City of Fountains"

From here, I walked to Washington Square Park, a beautiful little park across from the Westin.  I saw this statue of Valley Forge.

This little park is SO ADORABLE!!! I could have been here all day long.

I found the Korean War Veterans memorial in the middle of the park...

Then I walked back over to the Union Station and I saw this strange contraption.  You have to pay to park there and apparently this is how you collect the money. You literally shove your money into the slot that corresponds with your parking space. The slots looked like you'd have to fold up the dollars by 1/4 and push it in there. Can get it in? They offer this little stick to push you money in. So strange!

The station was celebrating its 100th birthday

A daytime shot of the station, so beautiful!

AND THEN I FOUND A SECRET TOY TRAIN STATION!!!

I geeked out for a minute watching all of the trains in the various little "towns"

This place was massive!

I'm not sure why there was this art deco piano in Union Station, but I went with it.  

I guess there's a huge NFL expo going on in the station, but I just loved the look of this clock.

From here, I capped off the night when I went to Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange and had THE BEST COCKTAILS EVER!!!