Whasssssssuup?!

  Saint Louis, Missouri, United States
Sunday, June 15, 2008

ST LOUIS IS AWESOME!  HAD SO MUCH FUN TODAY!!

St Louis

  As it was a Saturday, I thought I'd start my morning off with a jaunt down to the nearby Soulard Farmers Market.  There's been a market on this spot since forever, although the original buildings have been replaced.  Again it was buzzing, with musicians, people stocking up on fruit, just chilling out.  I myself purchased some much needed vitamin C and a croissant.  Spent a lot of time oochi-cooing over some kittens too.  It was really very nice.

So I was feeling in a much better mood when I headed back to the hostel, quietly singing to myself, when I guy lept out of an alleyway in front of me!!!  OK, that's not entirely how it happened.  He was stood in the alleyway, in a perfectly innocent manner and I was just day dreaming.  If I was a Catholic, it would have been a perfect moment to cry "Jesus Mary and Joseph", but as I'm not I just yelped and, being English, apologised.  Anyway, the lurker turned out to be Edrik, a 28 year old Puerto Rican who was to be my companion for the rest of the day.  It may have been the guilt at shortening my life by about three years!

St Louis

One of the main reasons for coming to St Louis, other than its staggeringly high crime rate, was to see the Budweiser Brewery, so that's where we headed.  It was huge.  And the tour was kind of like being indoctrinated into a cult; lots of 'whoop if you love Bud' type moments.  Good fun if you didn't take it seriously.  The tanks where they store the Bud to mellow are enormous.  If you drank a six-pack a day it would still take more than 130 years to empty one.  Also saw the horses that make up the Bud caravan.  At the end everybody got two free buds.  I had a pepsi.  Awesome!  But I was witness to Edrik's first ever Bud - he'd been a conscientious objector until now.

St Louis

St Louis

  Then we hopped into a taxi down to St Louis' famous archway.  It is beautiful.  And so big.  I just wanted to stroke it, it has that kind of tactile quality.  Spent quite a lot of time trying to get a shot that did it justice, but not sure if I managed.  The site is on the bank of the Mississippi too.  There's been a lot of bad weather in the US lately and lots of flooding, and here the Mississippi  was coming up over the pavement.  It took me a while to realise that it wasn't normally that high!  And it was moving so quickly too.

Wandered round St Louis for a bit, past the baseball arena where a game was going on (St Louis won - yeah Cardinals!) and as usual was accosted by several weirdos! 

St Louis

St Louis

  St Louis is big on food so we headed into the Italian district called the Hill for a particular local specialty, fried ravioli.  It's ravioli that's been coated in breadcrumbs and fried.  And that's exactly what it tasted like!  Nice though.  More exciting was the dessert.  We ditched the fancy restaurant and headed out to Ted Drewes on historic route 66.  It was heaving, and with good reason.  There specialty is frozen-custard called concrete (vanilla flavoured).  It was still really hot so it was very welcome, and it was a little piece of heaven eating that as the sun went down.

Finished off what had been a very chilled day at one of the bars on Soulard.  I got the drinks and afterwards came outside and remarked "that was the campest bar man I've ever seen".  A bit later, two people walked past us and said "you know this is a gay bar don't you".  So that explains why I had to pay for my drink this time!  And why their music selection was so good.

St Louis

All in all, I'm pleased to be able to say that my excitement at going to St Louis was, eventually, merited.  (Thanks in no small part to Edrik!)