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Tapas on patios, spirited festivals, foliage shrouded museums: In Kansas City, Missouri, fall is a long, leisurely and resounding last hurrah to summer.

A tunnel of trees bows in greeting as my husband and I enter the Ewing and Muriel Kauffman Memorial Garden in Kansas City, Missouri. Locals conversing with friends or with noses buried in novels perch on wooden benches tucked between painstakingly cultivated beds. This October mid-morning visit is our first, yet something feels sentimental about the spheres of yellow and fuchsia mums, meandering brick paths, and graceful fountains. A few beats pass, and then we smile at each other in a cheesy, light bulb moment of recognition: This regal oasis down the road from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art reminds us of the Sunken and Italian gardens at Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, which we visited on our honeymoon almost four years ago to the day.

The memorial garden's design was inspired by the parks the Kauffmans, notable Kansas City philanthropists, encountered on their world travels. Today, KCMO's warmth and worldly influences can be felt through its burgeoning global restaurant scene and history-steeped neighborhoods that host more activities than we can fit into our weekend stay.

Droves of visitors are in town for a marathon, the Chiefs game, a Lizzo concert and fall festivals. At Cornucopia, a family-friendly carnival in the Power and Light District, parents bounce babies on hips to the rhythm of oldies, and the air smells like funnel cakes and barbecue. A crowd reverently gathers around a stage where an artist leans over a pumpkin as tall as my torso. I, too, fall under his spell and watch a row of jagged teeth emerge as it transforms into a monster.