St. Louis...Gateway to the West

June 26, 2018

I'll be honest. I added St. Louis to my list of places to visit because I had never been to Missouri before and wanted to check it off my list. Now I wish I had planned a longer visit. It is the first on my list of places I want to visit again.

Getting here was an adventure - driving through a tornado warning storm with heavy rain and high winds. Made it in one piece and it pretty much stormed on and off the entire day I spent in St. Louis. That didn't stop me.

I drove right by the arch and my first stop was to head up to a barbecue place called Pappy's Smokehouse that I heard about on some cooking show. There was a long line but it moved quickly and I got to partake in some DEEElicious bbq.

The only thing left on my plate was the slice of bread under the ribs. I figured I was good for the remainder of the day until I remembered an ice cream place I heard about on a podcast I listen to that I wanted to try. I zigzagged my way around the city driving through some questionable and some stunning neighborhoods until I found Jeni's in the Central West End neighborhood near Forest Park. You can tell the area is under some serious renovation with building gutted and under renovation alongside bistros, a cool grocery store called Straub's and a wonderful corner book store called Left Bank (a dangerous place to hang out in).

Anyway, back to the ice cream. I heard about this women on a podcast called "How Things are Made" and she was such a cool woman and her flavors sounded so unique that I wanted to try some out. I'm not really much of an ice cream eater but I couldn't pass this up since her shops are mostly in the midwest. She makes flavors such as roasted strawberry buttermilk, brambleberry crisp, salted caramel, goat cheese with red cherries...stuff like that. I had a half scoop of the strawberry and the salted caramel with a taste of the goat cheese. It was worth the zigzag and walking around the neighborhood was a bonus.

This is the cool corner bookshop.

As I walked down this lovely street, I could imagine myself living there.

As you can see, a building under construction right next to a beautiful little bistro.

The fabulous Fox Theater (wish I had time to visit).

With a full belly, and being caught in the rain for the 3rd time, I drove downtown to explore before taking my planned tour of the St. Louis Arch. Driving in St. Louis is so easy and I found parking only a few minute walk from the arch itself which was a perfect way to see the city. I learned so much about the city as I strolled and stopped at different places. I did know that it was built where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet and that the Arch was built to represent not only Lewis and Clark but the Westward Movement. Did you know that 2.8 million people live there? That's a big city!

I love, like Boston, that the baseball stadium is right down town. There was a game scheduled for the night I was there but I knew it was going to get rained out. What a beautiful park!

This is the old courthouse on the way to the Arch.

I didn't know that the outside of the arch is all stainless steel. From photos I thought it was stone. They show a movie of how it was made at the Arch and it was incredibly fascinating! It took about 2.5 years to build and the engineering involved is remarkable. It is 630 feet high and 630 feed wide at the base. They said you can feel it sway during a storm but it felt really solid up there and it was windy outside. It is built to sway up to 18 inches. Yikes!

You get in line and wait for the "pod" to carry you up to the top.

The pod is tiny with 5 seats. I went with a family of 4 and all of our knees were touching. My initial reaction was "Oh crap!" It feels a big claustrophobic but once you get moving the outer door opens so you can look out the windows on the inner door to see the workings of the inside of the arch. It's a bit jerky and bumpy on the ride up and it takes about 3 minutes.

At the top you look out these little windows to the world outside. Here are some photos I captured of the city below.

The view of the city and the old courthouse.

There's the home of the St. Louis Cardinals!

Here's the Mississippi with a couple of the many bridges that span it from Illinois to Missouri!

You can spend as long as you want up there and they announce when the "pods" are heading back down. That is a smoother ride and takes about 2 minutes.

Once I left there, I walked down to the Mississippi and waited for my scheduled riverboat ride. How can I pass up a boat ride on THE Mississippi River!?

While waiting, another torrential downpour made its way through (my 5th of the day) and it never stopped raining until way after the ride was over. As you can see/hear from the video, it was crazy. There's a bridge in the background that you can't even see because it's coming down so hard!

I met and chatted with a couple from England and another couple from Florida as we made our way down the river between Illinois and Missouri. We were the only ones who stayed outside instead of sitting inside to stay dry. At this point we were all so wet it didn't matter.