St. Louis Trip - Day 1

St. Louis, here I come!!

So my trip started in the evening after work, my flight was at 7 pm and reached St. Louis around 10 pm.  I got out of the airport and met my friend....almost after 2 years!!!  It was great to see him and meet his fiance, T!!  It was long day already, so we went home and had some delicious "Dabeli" made by T, chatted for a while and then finally went to bed around midnight looking forward to start the adventure the following day :).

Day 1:
The morning started at 8:30 am and got ready by 9:30 and left home with my friend to go to downtown.  I knew my trip was gonna be adventurous right when my friend, R, played a gujarati song in the car :).  Today's agenda was to go cover the Arch and the St. Louis downtown.

I walked to the arch and went to its visitors center.  My friend had recommended seeing the Lewis and Clark: Journey to Westward movie at the arch, so I got the package with the movie ticket and Gateway to the Arch ticket together.  The movie was after half an hour, so to kill the time, I checked out the Westward Museum first.  It was nice.  Then headed to the movie which was about 45 minutes long and enjoyed it thoroughly.  It's not really necessary to see the movie, and people won't miss much if they don't see the movie, so I wouldn't recommend people for this movie if they are not really into the history of Missouri.  After the movie, it was time to visit the Arch!!  There was no crowd at all and no lines which was great!!  Just an FYI for people who have hard time climbing stairs, there are quite a bit of stairs that you need to go through to get to the tram entrance, so be careful.  It was pretty impressive in how they built the tram to get to the top of the Arch, but I got to tell you that I am not a fan of the tram compartment itself.  The door to get to the tram was just 4 feet high and the actual tram has egg-shaped compartments.....these compartments are not for people who have problems with small spaces or congested areas!!!  Anyways, it was a short ride to the top, so I didn't mind, and there comes some more stairs before I can get to the observation deck!!  You can stay on top of the arch as long as you want but I am sure you will be done observing and looking around in 10 minutes, max 15 minutes.  The observation deck has small windows which gives you views of the entire St. Louis downtown from one side and covers the river and the bridge from the other side.    The view from the top was indeed breathtaking!!!

View from the Arch (from Observation deck)

After I got back down, I went next door to the Old Cathedral and then to the Old Courthouse.  It was nice to go inside the Old Courthouse and stay in Air condition since the temperature outside was getting hot :P.  Right behind the courthouse is the city garden which is spread through couple of blocks with bunch of water fountains and really nice pool where kids were having ton of fun.  It was already past 12:30 pm, so met up with my friend and had a nice lunch in the city garden park.  After we had lunch, I continued roaming around downtown to check out some other historic buildings including the City Hall, Court House, Busch stadium, etc. and then came back to the city garden area to relax  and wait for my friend.  One of the fountains in city garden is so relaxing that I just spent over 30 minutes sitting by it and even wet my feet :).

City Garden (St. Louis Downtown)

Once my friend got done with his work, and after checking out almost everything near the area, my friend and I started heading back home around 3 pm which followed with a heavy thunderstorms and good amount of rain which definitely cooled down the weather.  The rest of the day was pretty relaxing with freshening up, dinner, watching some indian shows, and then me writing this summary :D.  This is the true definition of a vacation which is a mix of relaxation and exploring the place as well!!

With first day coming to an end, 2nd day info coming up!!  Stay tuned :)