Hope you had a great 4th! We most certainly did. We headed down to Kansas City for a few days for shopping, good food and relaxation. All 3 things I know how to do very well. So I have some travel reviews to share!
We stayed at the Intercontinential on the Country Club Plaza. Great hotel! Very beautiful and ritzy. I've stayed on the Plaza at Sheraton Suites (2x), Hampton Inn, and Holiday Inn. After staying at all 4 places, I would have to say the Sheraton is still my favorite. The Intercontinetial is very nice but it is on the south side of the plaza, within walking distance but I just got tired of walking to the north end of the plaza the entire time so another reason why I like Sheraton since it's on the north side.
When we checked in, they upgraded us to a suite for free! YIPPEE! I didn't even ask, they just did it. And it was nice! We had 2 balconies, 2 bathrooms, a living quarters separated from the sleeping quarters, it was awesome! I loved not sharing a bathroom on our trip. I felt high flutin' in our Intercontinential Suite.
For lunch we went to Seasons52 on the Plaza. LOVED IT! Everything on their menu is 475 calories or less. Everything is ordered a la carte, so if you order a burger and a side of fries, well then you are over 475 calories. Which of course us Hyde's do, because we love to eat. I would most definitely eat there again in a heartbeat! Service was slow, we sat on the patio so not sure if that had anything to do with it, otherwise that was my only complaint.
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| Seasons 52 |
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| Sangria for lunch |
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| Field green salad, great flavor |
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| Aaron ordered the blue cheese burger and wedges, he gobbled it down |
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| I ordered the grilled chicken caprese sandwich, delish! |
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| This pesto sandwich dipping sauce was the bomb! I already found a recipe online to re-create this |
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| The dessert tray looked amazing! Couldn't pass that up! |
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| We went with the coffee flavored one and shared it. It was just okay, I wasn't thrilled about the butterscotch taste it had |
After filling up on lunch, the rays were shining so we headed back to hit up the hotel pool.
A few hours at the pool and we got our Vitamin D for the day so we cleaned up and did a little shopping before dinner. Aaron had just bought some new Sperry's and as soon as he laced them up and walked out of the store, it started pouring rain! We were soaked and it did not let up for us! So we then decided to ditch shopping and go to dinner early.
We had dinner reservations at Cooper Hawks Winery and Restaurant. By far the HIGHLIGHT of our trip! Cooper Hawks is a winery based out of Chicago (imports grapes from California) which has a handful of chains across the states. When we walked in, I was in love with the atmosphere. Wine bottles everywhere in dark wooden panels. A beautiful large bar area and store. A dessert area filled with chocolate covered strawberries. Since we were early for dinner we decided to do a wine tasting. 8 tastings for $7, a heck of a deal! We loved every.single.one. Our bartender was also kind enough to give us an extra 2 samples each (we asked to try more). Now Aaron does wine samples like shots, I don't. I like to sip on my wine but I was trying to down my wine this time to keep up so we wouldn't miss our dinner reservations, not the best idea as these were generous samples. By dinner time, I needed to eat! Do NOT miss out on the sampling, it is a must-do before dinner! I highly recommend it.
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| Wine Tasting |
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| Whoops whoever you are lady, you were in my picture |
At dinner, you know, after downing 9 glasses of wine each in a half hour what better decision would there be but to order an entire bottle of wine for dinner?! Yeppers! They bring a really neat looking wine distiller to your table and it acts as a wine tap, pretty cool stuff. They actually comp'd our entire bottle of wine for us because we had to wait like 15 minutes (we didn't even complain, they just came over and told us that), hey that's cool with me! $21 bottle, FREE.
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| Cheers! |
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| Cool wine decantor |
For appetizers (cause this girl needed to eat!) we got the crab cakes and the cheese platter. OMGosh! Best crab cakes ever! The cheese platter was outta this world! My favorite was the apple smoked cheddar. Holy smokes was the appetizers A-MAHHHH-ZING! At this point, I was over the top miserable from wine and appetizers but our main courses were still coming. I ordered the chicken madeira and Aaron the gnocchi cabonora. HUGE portions. I felt like you could have just turned me on my side and rolled me out of there when we were done I was so stuffed. It was quite the experience! LOVED that place. It's a 'must-do' every time we got back to KC now.
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| Crab cakes and cheese platter |
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| Dinner! |
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| And we are FULL! |
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| I just want to do a face plant in my plate at this point |
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| Cooper Hawks was awesome! |
Well after dinner, as you can expect we headed back to the hotel as we were completely exhausted from stuffing our faces. We happened to catch a fireworks display that wasn't too far of a distance from our hotel room which was a nice surprise at the end of the evening before we passed out from our food/wine coma.
That morning we woke up bright-eye'd-and-bushy-tailed ready for day 2! We headed down to Classic Cup Cafe for breakfast. On their menu they had their 'famous pancakes' so I had to see just how famous they really were and Aaron had eggs benedict.
It was delicious! I do recommend it! Although, I wish I would have ordered off the a la carte menu, I really only needed one pancake, they were filling. I drank darn near a whole pot of coffee and was a jittery mess for the next few hours. After breakfast, we hit up plaza shopping again.
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| Classic Cup Famous Pancakes |
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| Egg Benedict |
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| And there I am, chuggin all that coffee I shouldn't have |
We love to walk thru furniture stores (and I'm not just saying 'we' Aaron truely enjoys it!) So we headed over to Restoration Hardware. Love that place but too pricey for us. I was falling in love with their blankets, as I'm a bit of a 'blanket connoisseur.' No seriously I am, I love a good blanket and you can always find me wrapped up in one. I wanted a beautiful cashmere one they had but my wallet didn't. Nor did my husband find it a necessity. Shucks.
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| Mr Hyde, please pass the biscuits at Restoration Hardware |
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| Wake me up in about an hour! Don't mind me passed out at Restoration Hardware in their cozy blankets |
For lunch we ate at California Pizza Kitchen, a favorite staple of ours when we are out of town. We always cave for the margherita pizza every time, it never disappoints. Aaron got a side salad and I tried their tortilla soup, very good and a nice change as we usually order spinach dip from there for our appetizer.
After some successful shopping, the sun was out in full force so we headed back for round 2 of the hotel pool. But first we stopped at Pot Belly's for smoothies. Another 'must-do' in the future, these smoothies were to die for!
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| The shortbread cookies is a nice little addition, I could have ate a whole bag of 'em |
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| We walked thru a store called Better Cheddar and I just browsed, it was my kinda store |
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| Better Cheddar is very dangerous, I could spend a lot of money on gourmet cheese, chocolates and vino |
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| The hotel pool was quite nice |
For our 4th of July dinner, we had reservations at BRIO. Brio is a chain restaurant, we do not have one in Des Moines but we have BRAVO! which is the sister restaurant. I actually found that I like Bravo a tid bit better but don't get me wrong, we thoroughly enjoyed Brio. Although I was far from impressed with my watered down red wine sangria. We started with red pepper bruschetta for an appetizer because us Hyde's always do a minimum of 3 courses. I thought it was genius to substitute red pepper for the tomato, it was delish. Will be re-creating that in the near future! Then since we had been eating like champs and needed to pull the reigns a bit, we decided to do a split the chicken marsala off the lighter side menu. Very tasty!
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| BRIO |
We considered dessert but decided to save dessert for after the fireworks.
For the fireworks, I was told of several places. One was the KC Riverfest that is downtown that is suppose to have the best fireworks in town. Another suggestion was the Liberty Memorial that was suppose to have the KC symphony playing. We decided to check out the KC Riverfest because I'm all about the bigger the better when it comes to fireworks. We got almost all the way there and it was sketchy. We both had new shoes on and nice clothes and the river bank looked pretty filthy. We drove thru some real shady parts just getting there. I then told Aaron, well we are definitely not going down there, let's check out the casino parking to watch the fireworks from, Isle of Capri. Okay we got over there and we went from sketchy to HELLA sketchy. So we made a dash for the Liberty Memorial while it was still daylight.
The Liberty Memorial did not have the symphony playing or any fireworks per se but it was an awesome location, a high point of the city, we sat and watched 15+ displays going off at once and then a good 5+ going at all times in the near distance, an 180 degree view. Great location, it wasn't too crowded either. After an hour and a half (yes and hour and a half! It was awesome!) of watching fireworks from all over the city in one spot, we headed back to the hotel.
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| Liberty Memorial |
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| Overlooking the city |
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| The building lit up with USA |
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| Same building but with changed to a flag, fun to watch it change |
Each night at the hotel, in the lounge, they have live music. We caught the last half hour in the lounge and thoroughly enjoyed it. And we made good on that promise of dessert later. At the hotel we ordered the vanilla bean cheesecake and holy smokes, that was delicious! It was the only time we ate at the hotel because their restaurant is quite pricey. It looked very nice so I'm sure I would have recommended it if we had tried it.
Day 3, we packed up and hit up Classic Cup Cafe for round 2 of breakfast. Aaron's omelet was the best thing on the menu, for sure. I kept digging my fork into his plate and kept suggesting he could try off my plate so I could have more off of his. :)
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| This delicious omelet with brie, spinach, apples, and bacon in it was killer good! |
Then we headed over to the Legends Outlet Center. Our favorite time to shop is around the holidays, you get the best deals. And I think Aaron's Sperry's were the only thing we paid full price for the entire weekend. Score.
Before hitting the road, we had lunch at Chiusano's Brick Oven Pizzeria. I hate giving a bad review but unfortunately, we were less than impressed with this place. The service was super slow. Our garlic knot appetizer were sitting in a pool of olive oil and garlic, just soggy and gross. The goat cheese pizza was not good, there was no crunch or brick oven taste to it. I just hate giving bad reviews but those were my honest thoughts on this place. We would never go back, not even if it was free food would I ever go back. Sorry Chiusano's!
It was hard to be too bummed out, it was the only pitfall of everywhere we ate. Overall we ate darn good KC Style and love visiting! Both Aaron and I will be back in KC in a few weeks for upcoming bachlorette/bachelor parties, can't wait for more food and fun to come! Hope you get a chance to try some of our good finds next time you are in Kansas City!
