St. Louis

We started the day today at the Parthenon in Nashville. There is a full scale statue of Athena holding Nike, along with casts of the pediment marbles. It was impressive. We then left for St. Louis, MO.

St. Louis is amazing. The day absolutely had its ups and downs, but St. Louis made up for it. The Arch is HUGE. We started at the St. Louis Zoo, which is FREE! It is in the running for the best zoo I have ever been to. I was less than a foot away from a live penguin and nothing separated us except for air. We tried to ride an egg shaped pod to the top of it, but it was booked for a private party. Who knew you could book a national landmark for a party? We had dinner at Schlafly brewery. It was delicious. We each got a sampler of beers, which had six in total.

After witnessing a robbery at a gift shop(a guy shoplifted 2 bottles of alcohol and the cashier chased him down...the guy got away). We decided to go to Laclede's Landing, an older area of St. Louis. We ended up at a very weird fusion night club...alone in a basement. After some searching, we moved to the upper rooftop patio where Matt and Butros had a few cocktails. The hotel tonight is a huge improvement on the last one. They are both Best Western, so we determined that it was really Nashville that was crummy and not all Best Westerns.

We are going to try to get tickets for the top of the Gateway Arch for tomorrow morning before we go to Oklahoma City, but it might not work out. We are going to go to a botanical garden designed by I. M. Pei either tomorrow night or the next day in Oklahoma City.