Travel picture of Oklahoma City
Snapshot of Downtown Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City

On getting to OKC, the first thing that we wanted to do was find out what the people in this city were like. In our opinion, there is no better place to inject oneself into a city’s pulse than an eatery frequently traversed by the locals.

We were hoping to be able to strike up a conversation with someone from the city and hopefully extract some insider knowledge from them. After driving around downtown for a couple of blocks, we decided to settle on a cafe called “The Kitchen”.

Once seated, We ordered breakfast. A serving of two croissants and a side of egg nog. While biting into the one of the two croissants we ordered a gentleman sitting next to us decided to strike up a conversation. Score!!

Travel pic of Pictur of "The Kitchen" taken while traveling through OKC
The Kitchen Restaurant

Gentleman: “Hello! Is the egg nog any good?”
Partytrail: “Yeah! it’s pretty good, would you like to have some?”
Gentleman: “Thanks but no. My food is on it’s way”.
Partytrail: “Are you from Oklahoma?”
Gentleman: “Yeah! Born and Raised, I work here as an Oil investor. Where are you from?”
Partytrail: “Oh cool, we are from Los Angeles, traveling through Oklahoma to do some travel writing. We are actually running a profile on Oklahoma city.”



His eyes lit up, visibly excited, he started suggesting different places in the city we should explore. Of all the places he suggested, he seemed to lay emphasis on going to see the memorial for the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing. In fact we ended up walking over for a guided tour of the memorial courtesy of the gentleman we just met.

Picture of the 1995 OKC bombing memorial taken while traveling through OKC
9:03 The exact moment the bombing happened.

On arriving at the monument, there was an eerie reminder that evil will always find a way to infiltrate civil society.

It was also interesting to find that while the rest of country still reels from the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, In oklahoma city, they had gotten an earlier insight to the fear, chaos and despair that come with such events.



The gentleman that showed us the downtown area, would talk about how the attack by Timothy McVeigh affected everyone in Oklahoma city in one way or another and how the terrorist act came to shape the lives of those who were affected by the attack.

Pic of OKC memorial taken while traveling through OKC
People paying respect to their loved ones.

The memorial itself was beautiful and peaceful, it’s design was almost so serene that one could argue it was built with the intention of sending a message to the people who tried to terrorize the city that “Good will always trump over evil”.

We took a walk around the parts of the city that were affected by the blast and could see the effects of the aftershocks from the bomb on nearby buildings.

The cracks in the walls were left untouched to serve as a reminder of what had transpired in the city on that fateful day in 1995.

After the tour of the memorial, we were in sort of a solemn mood and we decided it was time to lighten up a bit. It was suggested that we head over to the “Bleu Garden”, a food truck park of sorts.

We were guaranteed a good time and assured we were going to meet other locals since Bleu garden is supposed to be one of the spots where locals love to hang out the most in OKC.

Picture of Buildings affected by the blast taken while traveling through OKC
One of the buildings affected by the blast

In our next entry, we delve into the fun times we had at the Bleu garden and the other spots we visited in OKC. Don’t wander too far from the press. Till the next time………Party on!!!



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    Dante

    Published by Dante

    This article was written by Dante, a Chemical-petroleum engineer by study. He is a nightlife aficionado, an avid traveler, and a culturephile. | To get into touch with Dante please email him at  contact@partytrail.com or Follow Him On Facebook and Twitter

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