Gateway to the West - St Louis

I cannot believe how long I have not updated this blog. It has been a mad June for me. Work has taken me to the state of Missouri, which is located in the "Mid-West" of America. I am somewhat puzzled by this because geographically speaking, Missouri is kind of in the middle but on the East side of North America. Anyway...

I didn't get much time to explore the city, even though I spent a large part of June there. It has been very full on at work. However, when I did get a weekend there, I drove around to see more of St Louis than the airport, the hotel and the office.

First of all, there is the Gateway Arch. Its official name is actually the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It marks the start of Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the then uncharted areas of the West (of North America). The arch is a massive ribbon of steel that sits right on the edge of the Mississippi River. That's pretty much the first thing you see coming into the city itself. There is a tram service (think enclosed ferris wheel capsule) that goes all the way up to the top of the Arch. At the top, it is a narrow bridge way with windows on both sides where you can get a glimpse of St Louis below.



The other highlight of my weekend was to go to the Chihuly Glass exhabition at the Missouri Botanical Garden. I read about this exhabition on the plane actually, about the a similar exhabition in another city and though, oh well, I don't have a project there otherwise it would be interesting. Well hey guess what? The Missouri Botanical Garden happened to have an exhabition!! It was a very weird and wonderful display of glass sculptures amongst tropical ferns and plants and giant glass bulbs floating on ponds and water features in the part. The Botanical Garden itself was well worth seeing anyway. I spent a whole day there in the end.





Aside from that, well I managed to go to a Dave Matthew's band concert (1st day at St Louis too I must add and it was very exciting because my colleague and I got bargain orchestra row tickets last minute for $45). And yes, I managed to find a shopping outlet within 2 miles of where I am staying (just goes to show that I am not staying around the city and am usually in the outskirt of suburbs somewhere close to an airport... hmmm).

So I have been busy, but I managed to have some fun.