St Louis

We arrived in St Louis at around 3pm, pretty convenient as the hotel we stayed at was a short walk from the station and 3pm was when check-in started. It was all very fancy - they gave you free popcorn in the lobby in the afternoon, three free alcoholic drinks in the evening (plus bar snacks) and free soda any time you wanted it. Also free breakfasts, which meant we could take bagels and muffins for our lunch. When we got there we just chilled out for a little while (ate popcorn, etc), then went in search of dinner. The old train station had been converted into a shopping centre with a food court, so we ate there and had a wander. We tried the food that St Louis people are most proud of: frozen custard. It was basically like ice cream with a slight custardy taste and when it melted it wasn't at all like custard... it was quite nice but I wasn't overly excited by it!

The next day was MY BIRTHDAY and of course I was very excited. We went back to the shopping centre so I could use one of the touristy machines to print a medal for myself that said "BIRTHDAY GIRL". Very tacky but $1 well spent I think! Especially because Oz paid for it. We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden in the morning and saw lots of sculptures and flowers and things. Then in the afternoon we went to the Anheuser Busch brewery, basically the world headquarters for Budweiser. They do free tours and at the end you get free beer, so obviously it was a good 21st birthday activity. The brewery itself was cool, it smelt all malty like Shreddies. Afterwards we went back to the hotel for our free drinks and snacks, then to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, where I told the waiter it was my birthday, Oz told me I was a loser, but I got a free birthday sundae. All in all it was a very good brithday!

On the 21st we weren't in the mood for doing anything touristy so we had a lie-in then went to Delmar, a street that's (apparently) one of the top ten streets to visit in the USA. It has loads of random quirky shops with retro clothing and random gifts and things like that. So we wandered around there and had a cheap Thai lunch. I bought a nice t-shirt and Oz bought some comic books. We found a tea shop selling "bubble tea" which is a cool drink that has little blobs of tapioca in it that are tasty and chewy. Then we decided to see if we could shoot them out of the straw like a pea-shooter and had a competition to see who could shoot one into the drain several feet in front of us first. Of course Oz won but I managed one too (and do not fear, we kicked all the ones that missed into the drain afterwards so as not to leave a mess O:-) ). On the way back we found a shop we hadn't been in yet and I bought a new bracelet for Oz as an early anniversary present as his other one got lost in NYC. So all in all a very lovely day =)

Sadly, the 22nd was a bit of a failure in all respects. We went downtown to see the arch (symbolising that St Louis is the gateway to the West) and the free museum of western expansion, which I didn't really get because it was really poorly organised so I couldn't really tell what I was meant to be learning. I wanted to learn about the pioneers and stuff like that but it was actually mainly about these two guys who sailed all the way along the Mississippi and fought Indians and things on the way. Then I guess they came back again?? I don't know, I really didn't get the museum at all, but that was ok because the gift shop was awesome. They had all this tacky olde-tyme American stuff like weird candies and handmade bonnets (I was so tempted to buy one but couldn't really think of any good reason). Mummy, I bought a book for you but then we hit calamity because Oz left the bag on the Metro, so we lost the things we'd bought =(

After the museum we lunched in the park then wandered around downtown, but there really wasn't all that much there, so we walked to this random suburb that turned out to be really far away and it was really hot so we got grumpy. Then we realised we'd lost the things we'd bought earlier and though we phoned the Metro lost property they said nothing had been handed in, so we went and got on our train to Dallas (which was delayed, I forget by how long). So we had a bit of a sad ending to St Louis, which was a shame because before we had been having such a nice time.