When I vacation, I go to St. Louis

Sigh. No beach or cabana boys or 85 degree days. But drinks! Oh my, there were drinks. Hubs and I drove to St. Louis, MO for a wedding on the 14th and decided to make a long weekend of it with our pals, John and John. They were both in the wedding along with yet another John. We are so Catholic.


The four of us spent nine hours in the car together - both ways. Wow. Since we got there two full days before the wedding, we spent some time wandering the same streets that Nelly might have traveled in his youth, touring the Cardinals' Busch Stadium, bowling, finding out what St. Louis-style pizza is, tasting beer at the Budweiser brewery, and of course...


going to the top of the Gateway to the West arch. Amazingly, there is a whole museum underground, where I'm pretty sure you could survive nuclear holocaust. Riding to the top was probably my favorite part of our non-wedding activities. Five people (me, hubs, John, John, and the groom) climb into a tiny pod which jiggles its way up the inside of the arch with nothing more outside the miniscule door windows than a dim view of the bunker-like walls and winding stairs. Imagine Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth escaping earth in their pod within the Big Boy statue and you know what I'm taking about.


Two things St. Louis (link to map of interest) has in common with Minneapolis: it sometimes smells when you're near the river and they have an ADM mill. Things that are different: they have a park bigger than Central Park, they have Hobby Lobby, they have less traffic, and they have more historical buildings. But we have more lakes, parks, trees, paths, and general awesomeness. Just saying.


There is a handy system of highways between St. Paul and St. Louis, aptly named "The Avenue of the Saints." But because it was the original name of St. Paul, I'm going to start referring to it as Pig's Eye. So St. Louis and Pig's Eye have one major thing in common: THE STREETS MAKE NO SENSE. In Pig's Eye, we like to joke, it's because the town was put together by drunk Irishmen. I have no explanation for St. Louis, but at least they do have some cool street names.


As you can imagine, I did a lot of knitting during our 18 hours of driving, but I can't share because they are gifts. I can share this lovely photo. It's the very last picture from our vacation and it was taken near Hannibal, Iowa, in the parking lot of the Country Kitchen we stopped at for lunch.