With the help of Southwest Airlines,...

With the help of Southwest Airlines, which has slowly grown its presence here ever since local legacy airline Northwest was bought by Delta and the combined conglomerate to use the latter’s base of Atlanta as headquarters, I have been able to visit cities in the country that I otherwise would not be able to afford to see. (Why Southwest is ridiculed in some circles is beyond me; I and I think many others in the Twin Cities see this airline as a godsend.) They introduced new non-stop service to Kansas City a while back. Its low introductory round-trip price convinced me to fly there to try some barbecue, take in some jazz and, of course, see what the strip club scene is about.<br>

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I don’t know if there is a rivalry with St. Louis, the other big city on the other side of the state of Missouri. But being a tourist over four days revealed some differences:<br>

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-St. Louis is a much older city than K.C.; as such, Kansas City, and especially its suburbs, feels much more “modern” to me, more like the suburbs up here in Minneapolis.<br>