St. Louis Travelogue

[fancycwabs]

Ed and I headed out from Memphis Thursday morning, and arrived after some confusion (apparently it's impossible to hit I-64 west from I-55 north without shifting to an astral plane, or at least getting off the interstate) at University City at about 1pm. Had a pedestrian lunch at Fitz's, wasted an hour in Vintage Vinyl being reminded what a wonderful thing digital music distribution actually is (Ed got the Best of Kinky Friedman and a Graham Parsons CD), hit the comic books store, the tobacconists, the chocolatier, and the bookstore before heading back out of town to check into the hotel.

Wait--University City has a St. Louis Walk of Fame, with famous St. Louisians like Chuck Berry. Here's a photo!



Getting to the hotel proved interesting, as somebody had some trouble not getting into Exit-Only lanes, but we arrived, and got to our hotel, and received mixed signals about whether the room was smoking or not.



Off to the ballpark! These were the Cardinal Club seats, affording a strike-callable view of home plate if the damn umpire and catcher would get out of the way.



The food was mediocre and expensive, and the Cardinals sucked hard.

I'd done precious little research prior to the trip, relying largely on hemlock_martini's advice on things to do, but as it happened the local alternative weekly (RMT? RMS? TMJ?) delivered their annual "best-of" issue, so I knew we were gonna have to go to Larry Flynt's Hustler Club.

Oh, that's not true--Ed's the music director at the Methodist Church in Marion Arkansas, and that just wouldn't do. I did discover that St. Louis has a Trader Joe's, which Memphis will probably never have due to antiquated liquor laws, and got a couple of pointers for places to try for lunch on Friday. So the next morning we hopped in the car and headed out to find Trader Joes from a combination of Welcome Area maps and cell-phone Google Maps. Turns out that it wasn't too difficult to find, and I bought:

Red Pepper Hummus
Horseradish Hummus
Horseradish Cheddar Spread
Chicken Salad
Tusan White-Bean Spread with Garlic
Semi-Precious Stone Crackers
Cocoa-dusted Almonds
Dark Chocolate Caramels
Chocolate Toffee Pistachios
M&M'ed Sunflower Seeds
Tagliatelle
Sparkling Pomegranite Juice
Tomato and Red Pepper Soup
Sweet Potato Bisque
Tomato Bisque
Hawaiian Barbecue Chips
Parmesean Crisps
Liquorice Scottie Dogs
Halvelah
White and Green Tea
Pomegranite White Tea, containing no actual pomegranite
Beer
A selection of Charles Shaw wines
Pumpkin Butter
Praline Pecans

From there we went to John Volpi's Salumeria, and bought:

Salami
Salami
Salami
Salami
Italian Sausage

Then to Amighetti's for lunch. I probably should have taken a photo of my sandwich instead of the menu board.



Across the street from Amighetti's is a Bocce Court, which I haven't seen since those lazy afternoons in La Lavendou four years ago.



From there it was a relative short hop (I'm skipping the driving from bakery to bakery in the Hill looking for Amaretti part) to Ted Drewes' for a concrete.



The concretes are bigger than Ed's head, with the proper use of camera trickery.



After that we hit Target to watch the Cart Escalator, and Paddy O's for pitchers of much cheaper than ballpark beer before the game, where the seats weren't as good for calling strikes, but who cares when the Cards win? Also, Atlanta won, which put the Cardinals 1 1/2 games ahead in the NL Central over Houston.



Finally, a late-night drive back to Memphis stopping on the way to take care of something.



I have no idea why QuickTrip would think this was a good idea for a beverage. Anyway I dropped Ed off at 3am, and crawled into bed a little before 4 myself.

Comments

[rabswom.livejournal.com]

The Budweiser brewery also makes a relatively entertaining St. Louis destination. But it sounds like you had fun!

Uh, how was the 'frozen steamer'?

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

I didn't actually have a frozen steamer--QuickTrip has an orange slush thing that tastes exactly like frozen orange juice concentrate for all your lapsing into a diabetic coma needs.

[rabswom.livejournal.com]

You definitely should have tried one -- for science!

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Back in the days before Sudoku, the missus liked to do crossword puzzles, a habit to which she'll be returning eventually. One of these was looking for a four-letter word for "steamer."

It ended up being "CLAM," but I was amused for a few minutes, anyway.