So Much to See and Do

I would like to preface this blog with a few positive statements since the last post was slightly depressing:

1.  The ability to watch The Avenger's on opening weekend and spend only $10.00 for 2 tickets on a Friday night...amazing.

2.  Charlie "won" in the case of his car accident as fault was placed on the woman driving the other vehicle!

3.  Our Ford Escape now looks beautiful (post body work) and has 1,600 less miles on it.  That's right, in 10 days we put 1,600 miles on a rental car.  Thank goodness there wasn't a mileage limit.

Moving on...
We've continued to keep busy and it seems like there are more and more things we want to add to our "to do" list.  Luckily the weather has been beautiful, lending to ease of travel and sightseeing.  We spent May 12-13 in St. Louis, Missouri and this past weekend in Nashville, Tennessee.  St. Louis seems like ages ago, but I'll do my best to re-cap.

City Museum in St. Louis, MO

We arrived Saturday afternoon and decided to start with the most recommended spot, City Museum.  This is a place like no other and is really indescribable.  It is a playground for both children and adults housed in a 600,000 square foot former shoe factory.  They have transformed the space into an architectural gem using old objects found around the city, i.e. abandoned bridges, school buses, rebar, construction cranes, etc.  We were climbing, swinging, sliding and entertained by circus acrobats in training.  We had so much fun here and left exhausted and sweaty.  Here are some pictures & a video:

On the roof

In a cave

So we continued on foot (walkin', walkin') to a more well known tourist attraction, Gateway Arch.  This is another impressive piece of architecture.  Charlie kept saying that it didn't look real and I have to agree with him.  It looked to be digitally placed on the lawn, like something you would see in Star Trek on a planet in a far away galaxy.  The picture below is a good example (nice photography by Charlie).

Unfortunately we didn't get to ride to the top of the Arch because it was sold out!  No one we spoke to had ever run into it being sold out, but it was.  Oh well.  They had a nice museum about westward expansion that we spent some time exploring before heading back to our hotel to clean-up and prepare for phase 2 of the day, dinner!  We took the MetroLink to The Loop, which is a hot spot for dining, entertainment, and shopping.  We ate at the nationally renowned restaurant and music venue, Blueberry Hill.  It was delicious.

The challenge of the weekend was determining what to do on Sunday.  There were so many possibilities and so little time...we ended up at the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, which originated in St. Louis (where Anheuser met Busch).  This place is massive -- 199 acres of efficiency.  The grounds are beautiful (weird to say when I'm talking about a brewery, but it is true!) and the large, old brick buildings are filled with ornate character inside.  They have free tours that last about an hour and take you from Clydesdale stables to the bottling factory. 

Here is a fun fact from the tour as we entered a 55 degree room with aging beer: 

As the beer is going through its beechwood aging process it sits in giant containers for 31 days.  These containers are so large that it would require 1 human to drink 1 case of beer every day of his life for 127 years to drain this container.  The St. Louis brewery houses 66 of these containers.  Wow...

The only disappointment about our trip to St. Louis was that we didn't pass a "Welcome to Missouri" sign to add to our photo album.  Could be worse. 



All smiles.  Enjoying 2 free drinks after our free tour :)