SAINT LOUIS!!!!

Good day everyone. This is a post I'm sure most of you are looking forward to. It's long and detailed and awesome. So, here we go....

John and I spent last week in his home town, St. Louis, Missouri. This was my first time to the fabulous city and we had one incredible trip. We arrived Tuesday the 21st at about 1:30. We got a sweet rental car, the new Kia Soul. (the cars with the hampsters in the commercials) We discovered surprising fondness of our transport vehicle.

We arrived at Robert Knold's house in South City. This guy is super cool and a doctor. He and John grew up together and they reminisced about old times. It was fun to hear about John as a kid. The three of us took his dog for a walk in the 90+ humid heat.. I was not enjoying St. Louis at this time. Except the scenery was quite beautiful, very very green and lots of tall trees. After coming home we got dressed and ready for Mat's rehearsal dinner. I got to meet more old friends of John and his family. As is tradition in St. Louis, our dinner consisted of toasted ravioli. In other words, deep fried ravioli. (If you didn't know St. Louis was known for deep frying just about everything...you will once you're done reading this!)

Wednesday we got up and I had breakfast at IHop. John and his family were meeting up for lunch at a place called Sesame, which is Chinese food. NOT my favorite. So, I ate at IHop. I ordered my favorite item, Cheesecake Pancakes with eggs sausage and hash browns. Now, I've gotten this dish a lot here in Utah because its great but in St. Louis it was even more amazing. I started learning that food in St. Louis comes bigger and better. Those pancakes had so much cheesecake filling that I could not finish it for it was too sweet. Which is ODD for me because I love sweets and I have never not been able to finish it before. Anyhow, we arrive at Sesame and just enjoyed some Lewis family time...which naturally takes place around food. After that we went back to the house and got ready for the wedding. John's one and only younger sibling was about to be married. Thus the main reason for taking this trip to St. Louis. We had a wonderful time. The wedding was very Mat and Sarah. The ceremony was Buddhist. The cake was decorated with henna stencil (that Sarah's mom did, she's a rockstar). The food was every type of dish and many, if not all, home made. They also had a Caricaturist (and I totally got her to draw John and I on a sailboat - yeah buddy). There was music and dancing and drinking and laughing and happiness everywhere!


Thursday we got up and went to the temple. John's parents kindly joined us and drove us. We had a remarkable time. Afterwords, we went to the classic, Steak and Shake. This is mainly your ultimate burger joint. You got great burgers, fries, and not to mention SHAKES!! I wish we had one here. Then we cruised on down to a mall where I got some cute headbands (because John wants me to wear cute headbands) and a new skirt which ended up cheaper then what was on the tag. Gotta love that! John's sisters, MaryAnn and Laurene would love to tell you about the cool balsamic vinegar store they found and sampled.. perhaps on their blogs. After the mall John got some friends together and played basketball at his old church. I took a tour around the church, hardly anything was locked and I drew some super hero emblems on a chalk board. Fascinating.


Friday we again got together with the family for more food and fun. We went to the City Diner. Yep, it's just called the City Diner. It's unbelievable. That food was superb! Really! After stuffing ourselves for like the 10th time John and I, along with his brother Todd, took our next adventure to the well known St. Louis Gateway Arch. It's an incredible monument and if I remember correctly, it's the tallest one in all 50 States! After lots of walking and waiting and site seeing we then headed for the great Fitz's. (But we quickly dropped by the Cardinal stadium) Matt was working the dairy bar at Fitz's that night. Yeah, dairy bar, how awesome is that? Why don't we have a place like that in Utah? We don't care about alcohol, just ice cream! Anyhow, again here was some traditional deep fried foods. Toasted ravioli and pickle chips. I think it's funny how they give the food more appealing names when really all it is is breaded and DEEP FRIED!!! Of coarse, it makes anything good. Oh boy does it ever!



Saturday was the most eventful day. We got up with an alarm for the first time on this trip and headed out for the St. Louis Zoo. Which is FREE by the way. How wicked cool is that? We saw all sorts of amazing things. The penguin exhibit is so close you might be scared a penguin will walk or swim up and bite you. Another cool part of the zoo was the butterfly dome. It's just a room filled with hundreds of butterflies. I felt like I was in some Disney cartoon fantasy. After seeing a bunch of cool stuff at the zoo we went to Steak and Shake again because it's fabulous and then we headed out for 6 Flags!!! St. Louis Six Flags has got it goin on! It made me hate Lagoon. (Utah's amusement park) These rides were longer, faster, higher, and more intense. I was actually scared to go on some. I think the Mr. Freeze ride was my favorite. It was so insane! I also went on Superman...sigh. After going wild on a bunch of rides we went to a famous little ice cream hot spot called Ted Drew's. (oh yeah we went here the night of the wedding too) It's a pretty cool place but I don't know if it was anything amazing. Hopefully no one was hurt by reading that.


Sunday we finally relaxed a bit. We sorta slept through church... it's optional when you're on vacation right? ...So we went out to eat, ha what a surprise! Again at the City Diner. This time I had the french toast. I mean the DEEP FRIED french toast. It was probably the most delicious french toast in the world. Then we went to this Elk Park where you can just drive through these hills in a preservation and behold the majestic animals. I forgot my camera so I only have cell phone camera shots. Then we went home and did about nothing for 4 hours. Which was great because by this time I think all the eating out had gotten to me because my stomach was hurting! We later went out to eat (i know what you're thinking) at this Irish bar type place. It was not the most wonderful atmosphere but we were with good company and I had some salad which made me feel amazing.



Monday we took it pretty easy too. We went to the Science Center, also free, with some friends and we got to look and mess around with a bunch of neato stuff. Later that night we went to Sam's Steakhouse. This is a place very fond to John because he worked there for many years and just loved everyone there. A few of the old gang was still there which was great because they didn't charge us nearly what we were supposed to pay. Plate's start at over $30.00 there. John must be pretty awesome for them to hook us up huh?


Then Tuesday, today the 28th we went out to eat breakfast at a place called Bill's Pancake House. John and I each had dessert waffles. They were great! As most places there tend to have delicious food! Then we waited around for our flight and yadda yadda trip was over.

This trip was just fantastic. My description only covers the top layer of everything we did and how great it was. I loved getting out of Utah for a while. Although I will say that one thing I really love about Utah is that every building is smoke free! I couldn't believe how restaurants there separate a smoking section and a non-smoking section by only half a wall. Gross! And sure the humidity was awful but that really only lasted the first 3 or 4 days. Then it cooled off and was beautiful weather the rest of our trip. And I gotta say, John has great friends. His friend Robert that we stayed with and his wife Katie are probably some of the nicest and coolest people ever! A lot of his friends have added me on Facebook even! People there are so friendly and welcoming and comfortable. St. Louis has so many cool things to do and see and eat! Who knows if we'll end up there. I think I might be able to handle it for a couple years anyway.

Hope you enjoyed this! I did!