Today began with severe thunderstorms and torrential rain in the wee hours of the morning. By the time I went to chorus practice the rain had subsided to showers. When practice was over, the rains were gone and the weather became hot and humid.  We had lunch at Cosentino’s again. It is a neat little market, close to our hotel, which also offers prepared foods, deli sandwiches, souvenirs, liquor, and many other things. It has been our home away from home, whenever we can’t think of another place to go.

      The early afternoon was spent at the Sprint Center where the quartet semi-finals took place. What an incredible crop of quartets! Later we headed toward our eventual destination, supper at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbeque, stopping at a number of intermediate locations along the way for pictures.

     Our first stop was at the Lewis & Clark Monument, which commemorates the site where the explorers stopped on their way back from the Pacific Ocean after their momentous journey of discovery.

Lewis & Clark Monument

   Our next stop was at the (can you believe it?) Kansas City Public Library. Actually the library parking garage is the significant location — what a creative way to design the facade of a library parking lot.

Kansas City Public Library

       Next on the travel agenda was the Hallmark Visitor Center, in Crown Center. Hallmark Cards were born here in Kansas City in 1910. The Visitor Center contains memorabilia and interactive exhibits which document the history of the company over these 100+ years.

Hallmark Visitor Center

     From there we continued to dinner, at the best barbeque place that I have ever experienced, Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbeque, located in the Country Club Plaza. the nation’s first suburban shopping mall, modeled after Seville, Spain, complete with its own Giralda (Cathedral Bell Tower).

Giralda at Country Club Plaza

       A glorious fountain graces the entrance to the shopping center, in keeping with Kansas City moniker, the City of Fountains.

Entrance to Country Club Plaza

     The architecture throughout the entire mall painstakingly maintains the Spanish theme, and it is truly authentic and beautiful.

Beautiful Spanish Architecture

       A lovely river flows beside the mall. We learned from a worker that they actually produce an event similar to Providence’s Waterfires, once a year. The city has developed the riverside attractively with a walking path and ornamental bridges.

River at Country Club Plaza