Spent the weekend in Oklahoma City, mostly at the convention center and Bricktown. The convention center and attached Omni opened about a year ago. Both were really nice. They sit on the fringe of downtown just to the southwest of Bricktown. It's a nice area but a little detached. The area needs a 7-11 or a Walgreen's within walking distance for those of us that get tired of paying $5 or more for a bottle of water or a Diet Coke. Bricktown is really impressive, but they're hurting as bad as anywhere else with vacant spaces and a lack of staff. We had good luck Friday and Saturday night for dinner by going with some pretty simple options. Some of our friends that tried more upscale restaurants experienced very long waits with slow service. One group had a 7:45 reservation at a nice steakhouse and finally finished at 10:30.
One thing downtown has that we've discussed here: a streetcar line or 2 overlapping streetcar lines to be specific. Someone remind me again why Fort Worth didn't want something like this? It's clean, stops every few blocks with a frequency of 12-15 minutes, and cheap. $3 for an adult day pass purchased at 7:00pm on Friday was valid until 10:00pm Saturday. Seniors and kids were half price. The Bricktown loop encircles its namesake and the Downtown loop splits off to hit the CBD to the north.
Other highlights: Scissortail Park is a superblock open space across the street from convention center with an amphitheater, a massive lawn, a dog park, a playground, and a restaurant on one end that was a lot like Shake Shack. Unfortunately, my busy schedule didn't give me time to do anything more than look at it from afar. There were a lot of rental scooters in the area, but they seemed to be used sparingly and didn't seem as chaotic as what I've seen in Dallas. There was a noticeable lack of homeless people around. I'm not sure what their plan is for keeping them out of the tourist area. I didn't see more than a half dozen all weekend. We went to the OKC Memorial last night. There were 3 people there other than our group and security. It is a very tasteful and impressive memorial and I would like to go back during the day to see the museum.
A few pis for your enjoyment.
Paycom Center and downtown from the Omni
Bricktown canal
Scissortail Park
Bricktown canal
OKC Memorial
Bricktown from the Omni
Devon Energy building
A really bad pic of one of the streetcars from the hotel
