Downtown St. Louis

31st October, 2011

Today was a very productive day. Amelia and myself went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning. It was #2 on the list of St. Louis' top sites on Trip Advisor and some people said that it might be the best botanical gardens in the world. It was very nice and it was a beautiful day to be there with not a cloud in the sky (though it was a little chilly). There were Japanese and Victorian gardens and a very warm and humid climatron with exotic plants. We had nice sweet potato, apple and pumpkin soup for lunch.

Next we made our way to the Citygarden downtown. To my surprise, I had actually been there before. Last year as I was waiting for my bus from St. Louis to Kansas City, I walked around the garden. There are a number of art installations in the garden. Since St. Louis Cardinals won the baseball World Series last week, there was a bit of a Cardinal theme to the park. One sculpture had a Cardinal scarf around his neck and they dyed the fountain in front of the old courthouse red (see photo above).

We then went to the famous St. Louis arch (you can see it behind the courthouse in the photo above). I saw it last year but didn't go inside. You can take a little capsule to the top of the arch. There is not much room and very narrow windows so you have to lie down to see anything. There are nice views of the city and across the Mississippi to Illinois. When we came down, we went to the Westward Expansion Museum beneath the arch. They had these life size mechanical figures speaking about various things. They were hilarious as they moved in such a strange way (almost looked like they were dancing the robot).

We popped into the Old Courthouse which is a very nice building. There are some nice paintings, lots of red, white and blue and I learned a little about St. Louis history. We then went to a nice cafe where I had a cappuccino (the best coffee I've had since I've come to the US). I also tried gooey butter cake, which was very rich but very tasty. Amelia had a sign language class in the evening in a community college. I decided to go along for the ride and wander around the campus for a few hours.

It was halloween night but Amelia has to work tomorrow at 5.30am and my flight is also tomorrow so we just stayed in and watched 'The Village', which I hadn't seen before.