Oklahoma City

It's been a short night with fitful sleep, but our first day in OKC started well with a great breakfast at Waffle Champion, where they serve sweet and salty waffle variations. Afterwards we started our city tour with our friend from the local CVB, Sandy, who drove us around.

Oklahoma City wouldn't exist today without the legendary Oklahoma Land Run in April 1889. At this time it was Indian country and there was not much around but prairie. When the government opened up the land to settlement, people hurried in to get a "good" piece of land. Nowadays OKC is an attractive, modern city with only one highrise (Devon Tower), but progressing fast in the last couple of years in regard to the culinary, nightlife and shopping scene. There are some up&coming fancy neighborhoods: Bricktown (the old part of town, see 2nd picture) is one of the older neighborhoods, whereas Midtown (where we stayed), the Plaza District (first picture) or the Paseo Arts District just recently developed their own profile. One of our focuses this time was to explore the different neighborhoods, another was the culinary scene.




As modern as OKC may appear, in the Stockyards District it is still strongly linked to its wild west history, to cowboys, horses and cattle. A world on its own! In 1910 the Naional Stockyards were founded, out of necessity: the cattle from the South (Texas) were brought into town via cattle drives to be traded. Still nowadays there are big cattle auctions taking place and the western wear & boots stores here are the "real deal".

We revisited our favorite museum in the morning: the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (with the famous Indian sculpture in the lobby, see pic), which shows a broad spectrum of different aspects: Western Art, Native American Art, great performers, rodeo and much more. We were fortunate and got a chance to see the annual exhibition "Cowboy Crossings" (which was not pened yet) - where exceptional pieces of art (paintings, sculpture etc.) and crafwork (saddles, boots, silbersmithery) are shown (and sold). Also, there was an interesting exhibition about indian head dresses.


More culture in the afternoon: For the first time we got a chance to see the American Banjo Museum in Bricktown - an amazing collection of music instruments starting in the 1830ies to today. Wouldn't have expected the museum to be as big and interesting inside.

The Rapids is a new addition to OKC's Boathouse District - a watersports & entertainment complex along the Oklahoma River. It is used as a professional kajak training course as well as for whitewater rafting boat trips for the general public. We only watched since we didn't want to get soaking wet inbetween appointments and this was a good idea, considering that two boats flipped during our visit.

After having had lunch at "Melts" (great varieties of the classical cheese toast or grilled cheese) and delicicous pie for dessert at "Pie Junkie" in the Plaza District (see pic above) we were spoiled with dinner in a more upscale restaurant in downtown by name "Flint". We chose bison pot roast and steak (pic) and both dishes were excellent and went well with a local brew (beer, by the way, is getting better and better!).