Today we started the day playing roof top tennis at the hotel here in Kansas City. Apparently there aren’t many people who play tennis at this facility because the courts are littered with trash. We have not had a very positive experience at this hotel and I plan to make sure that TripAdvisor knows about it.
Our hotel, the Westin Crown Center, tries to be upscale but is really lacking. Yesterday at 5 p.m., the breakfast room service trays had not been picked up from the hallway. When we get into bed for the night, we discover that the sheets are too small for the bed. They are untucked at the top, bottom and sides. It takes us until 12:30 a.m. to get the correct size sheets. The brochure touts their tennis courts but it’s like playing tennis on skid row with plastic bottles, butts and broken glass on the courts. The staff is lackluster at best and the hotel looks like it was designed by Stalin (my opinion) or Mussolini (John’s opinion.) And of course you have to pay for each electronic device separately to get internet, there’s no free breakfast, and there’s a charge for self-parking.
After we are done playing tennis and clean up, we go to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. It is a really fine small to medium sized art museum. Right now they are having an exhibition of Monet’s Water Lilies. Impressionism always draws a big crowd although I can’t see the appeal. We’ve seen the Water Lilies in Paris so we skip the exhibition.
The first group of works we see are Roxy Paine’s Scumaks and Dendroids. These are quite interesting blobs. There is a blob making machine at work in the museum.
Then we spend quite a bit of time in the Egyptian section of the museum. I’m usually all hot to get to pre-Rennaisance art so too often we skip this. The Nelson-Atkins museum has a small but comprehensive section of art from the Egyptian tombs.
They also have an outstanding outdoor sculpture area. There are many modern sculptures plus a few golden oldies.
We finish up with a tired traipse through contemporary art. I think our favorite is Max Ernst’s Capricorn.
We get back to the hotel in time for happy hour and have an interesting discussion with a retired lawyer concerning world affairs in general and American politics in specific. He holds mostly the same ideas that we have. Who would have expected it in Kansas City?