How far is Olathe from fun? (Kansas City, Liberty: hotel, home, neighborhood)

[VortexSpin]

I've heard a lot about Olathe as being fairly dry/canned suburbia. If that's the case, I assume most people go over to Kansas City for entertainment and recreation. So how far is it (drive time) from parks, restaurants, theaters, museums, hotspots, etc? I've been in KC once or twice briefly but I'm not too familiar with the layout.

[MOKAN]

Lawrence isn't far via K-10, home of KU and the full college-town experience. Others will fill you in on KCMO and this thread will probably get moved to the Missouri forum.

[VortexSpin]

Oh, I thought it would be appropriate here because Olathe is firmly in KS instead of MO.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by VortexSpin

Oh, I thought it would be appropriate here because Olathe is firmly in KS instead of MO.

I agree a great deal, but Olathe is considered a suburb of Kansas City, the city in Missouri, and the Kansas City forum is a sub-forum of Missouri.

Olathe is 29 miles from Lawrence, 22 from Kansas City, MO. So you're sandwiched inbetween two places for nightlife, restaurants, theaters, museums, etc. Lawrence offers a lot of options. Downtown Lawrence is hopping and busy. But Kansas City, MO's urban core is where most of the typical big city attractions are located. You'll have to search Google for what's going on in both places and then make your choice and/or wait on other replies. I would check out both places. In KCMO, you could start by checking out the Country Club Plaza, the Power and Light (bar) District, River Market (including Saturday morning City Market), Westport, Crossroads Art District including the First Friday Art Walk, and go from there. Crown Center is another major point of interest and worth checking out, but is mostly family/tourist oriented. If you're really interested in the museums, the Nelson-Atkins is the major art museum and there's the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art nearby, both are in the Country Club Plaza area. If you're interested in Kansas City history, you can check out the Kansas City Museum and the Steamboat Arabia Museum. There's now a small Sea Life aquarium and Legoland at Crown Center, the latter which only allows adults w/o kids at certain times. The local (national) WWI Museum and Liberty Memorial are across from Crown Center in Penn Valley Park, all at the south end of downtown. Historic Union Station is also in this area and well worth checking out, even just to walk around. As for Johnson County, where you live, there's an arboretum to check out, a couple of great biking trails (Indian Creek and Mill Creek trails), Shawnee Mission Park, The Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm Historic Site in Olathe, Oak Park Mall (largest and best mall in the KC area), and a couple of small urban or inner suburban nodes worth checking out (downtown Overland Park, Johnson Dr in Mission, The Village Shops and Cornith Shops in Prairie Village.) The nearby, just-across-the-state-line districts of Brookside and Waldo are worth checking out too. One of my favorite parks in the area and one worth checking out on foot is Loose Park at 51st and Wornall, just south of the Plaza. Google is your friend.

The basic layout of urban KCMO is downtown on the north, which is rather large and greater downtown contains the River Market on the northside, the Crossroads Arts District just south of the main part of DT, and Crown Center and Penn Valley Park on the very south end of downtown. The Country Club Plaza is the south bookend of the urban core and a large 'uptown' urban district in and of itself, with the center being a shopping, restaurant, bar, hotel and office district and residential surrounding. Westport, a historic sort of bar/restaurant/neighborhood district popular with young people, is just north of the Country Club Plaza. The greater Midtown area is inbetween it all, with the West 39th restaurant/boutque area being the coolest part, all of which is in Missouri, but literally just across State Line Road from the University of Kansas Hospital and Medical Center complex. The entire urban core from downtown to the Plaza area is about 4-5 miles and a mile or 2 wide, basically the Missouri River to 47th Street and State Line Rd to Troost Ave.