St. Louis, Missouri

With our souls filled, we headed north to St. Louis. Lightly grazing Arkansas and Illinois, we landed in St. Louis 5 hours later. We checked in to our inexpensive but modern hotel called Hotel Ignacio, and prepared ourselves for an intense Italian dinner (suggested by Tim’s friend Jason Bornstein) at Cunettos House of Pasta on The Hill. Their famous seafood pasta and veal marsala did not disappoint or leave us on empty.

We had full intentions on hitting the Central West District or The Loop but Erica jinxed our weather earlier on the phone telling her brother we’ve had nothing but blue skies…and it was a down pour. Erica struck up a conversation with a friendly staffer at Cunettos and asked for a suggestion. The friendly staffer ended up being the owner, Frank, and he recommended we run to the Botanical Gardens for the Chinese Lantern Festival before it closed.

Uber does not exist in St. Louis yet so Frank called us a cab and we hightailed it to the Lantern Festival. We pulled up at 9:17, 2 minutes shy of the last call for tickets. Tim sweet talked the staff into 2 last tickets, promising we would be out by 10pm and buy an umbrella from their gift shop. We headed into the storm, umbrella clad and without a soul in sight! We spent the next 45 minutes running through the botanical gardens in the rain, taking in the crazy lantern installations and relishing how our seemly bad rain luck turned into the best luck!

We couldn’t leave St. Louis without a trip to the Gateway Arch so we woke up extra early and headed downtown for our 8:10am call for entry. Stumbling through the park construction (due to be completed in 2017), we finally made it to the arch. Erica’s coworker Carrie told us it was a must to travel to the top of the arch, no matter how touristy it seemed and she was so right! Having zero clue what we were getting into, we headed below ground and were cued up for our “tram ride” to the top. We’re not quite sure how to explain it other than a Willy Wonka size door that opens into a pod from 2001 A Space Odyssey. The engineering for the tram itself seems crazy as you are upright the entire time and essentially climbing to the top. If the arch were a roller coaster ride it would be top of the charts on fear factor.We made it to the top, sadly on a cloudy day, but being 630 ft above ground in steel arch was still just as terrifying.

Being the designers we are, we didn’t want to leave St. Louis without a great shot of the Gateway to the west so while on top of the city, we took a gander around and realized there was a casino just across the water with the perfect view. We packed up and headed across the Mississippi. While getting lost, we found the ultimate view point, the Malcolm W. Memorial Park. A hidden gem that’s not advertised, we stumbled upon the park conveniently located next to the casino. It was built exactly for our purpose, to view the arch complete with a lookout! The man running the park approached us on his segway and offered to take our photo. He also mentioned that we were on candid camera and wave at the web came. Rather than waving, Tim texted Bonobos and they happily supplied us with the below gif of our time spent with the arch. Yes, that’s a statue and yes Erica moon walked. Cheers to making it to the west side!