Experience the best of Oklahoma City

Oklahoma City sits on the plains of central Oklahoma and was born in a day: on 22 April 1889, thousands of settlers rushed in to claim land in the Land Run, and a tent city stood by evening. The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum honours the 168 people killed in the bombing of 1995, with a field of empty chairs, a reflecting pool and a surviving elm tree.

Bricktown, a district of red-brick warehouses beside a canal, holds restaurants, a ballpark and the American Banjo Museum. Stockyards City, with Western stores, steakhouses and a working livestock market, keeps the cattle trade alive, and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum tells the story of the West. The Oklahoma City Museum of Art has a large collection of Chihuly glass. Route 66 passes through town, and the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, with bison, lies to the south-west.

Chicken-fried steak, onion burgers from nearby El Reno, smoked brisket and Indian tacos on fry bread are the local tastes. The wind blows steadily across the plains, summers are hot, spring brings sudden thunderstorms, and autumn is mild and sunny.