Our Tale of Two Cities: Travel to St. Louis and Chicago

July 23 to July 30, 2005

Welcome to another travel installment from the Thornberries! This particular vacation was experimental in many ways. For the first time, Jennifer and I would be trying to string together experiences from not one, but two major cities, St. Louis and Chicago. I had gotten a tantalizing glance at the former on a family vacation in 1987. My father grabbed an image of the Arch on old school film:


More, we had a decent amount of experience with science museums from earlier trips…and the plethora of loud, obnoxious children who liked to climb in simian fashion over top of us to paw over every exhibit we wanted to frequent. So we had long been chewing on the idea of seeing an art museum, figuring that it would weed out the children, while simultaneously allowing us to plumb a side of ourselves we’d never explored. Having two museums, one in each city, would give us a good sample from which to draw conclusions about the experience.

Saturday, July 23, 2005: The First Elegant Leg

Jennifer and I wanted to make this trip in a leisurely fashion, so we did all of our packing the night before. All we had to do, then, was basically pick up the rental car the next day, load up all our supplies and hit the road by around 10:30 a.m.

The Itty Bitty Bookstore

We are both espresso coffee fanatics, and this would be a Saturday when we missed that glorious treat. Not to be cheated out of our beloved coffees by such a small hurdle as being out of town, we planned to stop at the Barnes and Noble in Louisville, for a visit to their Starbucks Café. When we arrived, we had a lunch of bagels and chips from our cooler and then went inside the store. While the frappacinos were good as always, I was surprised at the size of the facility. I had hoped to procure a book or graphic novel from a larger store, something that was not available at the one at home; but to my chagrin, the Louisville outlet was actually smaller and they had less of a selection. [Grumble]

The Tortoise and The Car

While on the road, Jennifer and I stopped periodically for restroom breaks and such. It was funny, because we kept passing this same guy in one of those old classic cars with a steering wheel the size of pot-bellied stove and lacking in air conditioning. Apparently, he drove slower than we did, but stopped less often. A “slow and steady wins the race” type of guy, with his chicken neck tipped back, his eyes half-closed and his arm draped out the window, waiting for a less polite driver to whizz by and rip it off with a mirror. We didn’t witness that bloody event, fortunately, but it became a running gag to see how long it took to overtake him each time after we completed a stop.

My Nasty Nuts

Yak! Since we had our Zen lunch on the road, we scheduled a later stop for a snack and some dessert. Jennifer had been itching to try some soy nuts that she had first sampled from someone at work, so we cracked into our little pouch of them. Yeech! They tasted like little round balls of chalk with a hint of BBQ in them that reminded me of motor oil. If I put my tongue on the roof of my mouth even now, I can still slightly taste them. We called that a failed experiment, figuring that next time, we’ll try the original flavor. Something less chalkish. Unfortunately, our follow-up wasn’t much better. We had a dessert cookie that was basically a Nutter Butter crunch patty with peanut butter center. While they seemed appetizing in theory, they ended up being more like polystyrene patties with a remote hint of peanut butter. More, they didn’t break off along the lines designated by their mold in the tray, but came out in many oblong shapes, from those resembling Florida to fractal figures that even the Mandelbrot set couldn’t emulate. It was difficult to divide them up evenly when they snapped out in a manner reminiscent of Down’s syndrome. Better luck next time…. :-/

Slack-Jawed, Slope-Browed Goons with Gas--The Quest for Fuel

Refueling was a trial on this leg of the trip. We were in the middle of Illinois, trying to find an interstate exit. Our first stop off turned out to be a podunk station that still had gas pumps with rotating analog numbers. Since they weren’t in the digital age yet, it was pretty certain they wouldn’t take a credit card. Plus, it had that “I’ll make you squeal like a pig” atmosphere, being heavily rural and isolated. I wouldn’t want to go into one of their restrooms! ;) We ended up turning right around and getting back on the interstate, figuring the risk of running out of gas was preferable to stopping there. Later on, I took us off a stop that turned out to have nothing at all. No one to blame there, just my own dumb lack of observation; even the signs indicated the exit was a desert. Finally, we found a decent gas station, but it was full of slack-jawed, slope-browed Cro-Magnons chewing their cud and hurling obscenities back and forth at each other. I was happy to fill our tank and get back on the road with nary a look back.

The Gold-Star City—At the Foothills of The Arch

Jennifer and I have a huge map in our office where we attach colored stars to the major cities where we’ve visited. Several days before we left, we had been talking about how this trip would allow us to add St. Louis to our collection. So I took to thinking of it as “the next star” in my head. The next color up on the list was gold, hence the moniker.

We rolled into the city that evening, with enough daylight left for some good scenery. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much of it, because I was trying to navigate the intestinal highway system of exit and entrance ramps without splattering us into gelatin all over the guardrails and other drivers. It’s always inconvenient removing human remains from one’s vehicle, y’know. Despite the difficulties, however, I did manage to see the Arch bulking against the horizon, resembling nothing else around it. Jennifer managed to squeeze off a few shots on the camera, the first of what would turn out to be many.

One of my great phobias is dealing with congested traffic, especially in great metroplexes like St. Louis. As I’ve discovered, however, I’m an even worse passenger than driver in such circumstances, with my nail-biting, buttcheek-clenching tendency to backseat-fret. Therefore, it was me who ended up navigating us through the brick-paved streets of the Gateway City, to our hotel.

The Drury Inn

Naturally, we parked in the wrong place and ended up having to lug our gross of packages down five floors where we were to learn that such effort hadn’t really been necessary after all. Figures. ;) Our tour book described the hotel as “historic,” which basically meant “old.” I took a look at that worn and blackened brick exterior and groaned, thinking we’d selected yet another run-down shack (as with our Chicago trip back in March 2003). But I was delightfully wrong. Arrival at the Drury Inn turned out to be almost uniformly a blessing. On the inside, it was, quite simply, the most lavish and best facility to which we had ever traveled. It was not as opulent as the Beau Rivage, where we stayed on vacation last year (July 2004), but it did have many more perks for a slightly cheaper price. Some examples of the Inn’s virtues:

• Refrigerator
• Microwave
• Freestanding remote (not one of those annoying mounted ones that can’t be moved away from the nightstand)
• No limit on television volume; good soundproof rooms, which is always a plus on vacation! }:)
• Coffee maker
• Free soft drinks and popcorn (former in the fridge, latter in the microwave)
• Laundry services
• Free breakfast every morning
• Free cocktails every evening
• One free glass of wine at their in-house restaurant

The Drury Inn also had the benefit of being a reasonable distance from the Metrolink train, Union Station and of course, the St. Louis Arch. We highly recommend their hospitality! Our only criticisms were their elevators and the information desk. The former took forever, even though each one only went to half the floors, and they were always stuffed so full of people that we perpetually had some kid’s swim fins or a lady’s purse crammed sideways into our nearest orifice. The latter would show itself later (or further down this outline!)

We really didn’t do much that first evening after our arrival. However, since we had been given a ticket for a free glass of wine, we decided we’d have dinner at Lombardo’s, the in-house Italian restaurant. I was surprised when our waiter recommended one of their Chianti red wines; we were getting it for free, so I thought he’d suggest a glass of the house rot-gut Kool-Aid/Mister Clean blend. But no, this was an excellent red wine with subtle flavor that complimented the meal well. And the meal…mmWow! We split a plate of the Linguine Lombardo, a divine pasta dish mixed with sublime flesh-of-the-hog and mushrooms. The overall cost of the meal wasn’t much more expensive than what we might have spent at Logan’s Roadhouse. After that hearty meal, we basically lounged around the room.

One implement the Drury Inn didn’t provide, and we forgot to bring, was a bottle opener. We learned from our previous vacations that we could minimize expense by providing our own beer and wine and so had brought a cooler filled with a selection of cold ones. But here we were unable to open them, because Jennifer’s were not “twist off” bottles. So I improvised, using my very own belt buckle to try to pop her top. The result was that I nearly cut my damn finger to the bone on the ragged bottle lid edge when the buckle slipped off unexpectedly. I was fortunate that I only sliced a superficial wound that bled minimally. I finally succeeded in opening her beer, but that close call would later motivate us to seek out a real bottle opener next door at Union Station.

After a few drinks and some random television, we went to bed.


NEXT: First day of attractions in St. Louis.

Click for Part II