Kansas City Staycation Highlights

Yesterday I mentioned we spent last week staycationing in Kansas City. Kansas City is such a fun city and there’s so much to do here, especially when special events are going on. Sure, I would have loved to spend a week in Mexico or Paris, but I had a wonderful time just taking advantage of some of what my home city has to offer! We stayed busy all week doing fun things, but here are the top three highlights from the week.

1. Ben Folds at The Kauffman Center

We Kansas Citians are so lucky to live in a city that has so much offer in the arts. There are a lot of options for places to visit to get some culture, but one of my favorites has to The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. It is such a stunningly beautiful building, both outside and inside. They host a lot of different special shows in addition to regular performances by the Kansas City symphony orchestra, which is incredibly talented.

One of my all-time favorite artists, Ben Folds, played a show with the KC symphony orchestra there on Wednesday so of course we had to go. Wednesday also happened to be our three-year wedding anniversary, and our first dance at our wedding was to Ben Folds’ song “The Luckiest",” so it was was the perfect way to celebrate the day together. The show was just phenomenal; the symphony hall is small and has perfect acoustics, and I really loved Ben playing with the orchestra. He even played our wedding song which made the night even more special!

The front of the building is all glass which provides gorgeous views of the city. I especially loved the view once the sun went down! And the outside of the building is just as or even more gorgeous at night, don’t you think?

2. The Hotel Sorella

We had thought about going away for a view days to Vegas so we could stay in a nice hotel, eat out at some really good restaurants, and enjoy some time at a fancy pool, but since we can do all that in Kansas City we decided to save a little money and just stay for a few days at a hotel here! The Hotel Sorella at the Country Club Plaza is brand new to KC and it is incredible! The lobby and rooms were gorgeous, it had a killer rooftop bar and pool, and the service was perfect. They’ll even chauffeur you around town in a Cadillac Escalade for free! The prices are on the high side for Kansas City but it’s worth it. If you want to treat yourself for a few days I would highly recommend checking out Hotel Sorella!

Here are a few pics of the lobby:

The room and the view from its balcony:

And the rooftop pool area:

3. Boulevardia

Our vacation dates happened to coincide with the new Boulevardia festival in the West Bottoms. The event was organized by Boulevard, KC’s beer empire, so naturally the festival featured lots of beer as well as yummy food and live music. I was a little disappointed that they only sold Boulevard beer outside of the special Taps and Tastes Experience (which cost $75 and sold out in minutes), but otherwise it was really fun. They had a bunch of really great food trucks there and there were live bands playing all day and night. We got up close to the stage for the last two bands of the night, Catfish and the Bottlemen (who were playing their first show in the U.S.!), and the headliner, Capital Cities.

Other highlights included our anniversary dinner at Osteria Il Centro, ice cream at Glace, happy hours in River Market, and a performance of The Pirates of Penzance at Theater in the Park in Shawnee Mission.

What are your favorite things to do in Kansas City?