St. Louis

Named after Louix IX of France, St Louis is strategically set at then junction between the Missipi and the Missouri rivers and is considered the gateway to the (wild...) west.

It is supposed to have a strong french influence but the beer is mostly german and I read somewhere that has a victorian past. To add to the confusion, the predominant gastronomy is italian!... :-s

A part from the downtown area where sky scrappers dominate the skiline, the rest of the city seems to be a wide flat plane with small (some large...) two story houses grouped together in neighborhoods. We ventured into the hills for dinner, where we met Lori (or Laureen we can't quite figure out) and a strange fella that was buying Amy drinks in that so often seen "get her drunk for sex" routine. The following day we drove around to visit some the city's more important landmarks: Union Station (a great historical building turned to a miserable and tasteless mall), the cathedral (neo gothical front with neo classical cupule and interior decorated with plenty of tiles), the Eads bridge (longest steel arch of its time in 1874. There is a lucky luke book on this bridge. The story tells that the locals thought Eads was mad and said the bridge cost 1,000,000$ and would take 1,000,000 years to build) and the lovely central west end neighborhood where we tried the crab cakes and bought a couple of books (thanks for the suggestions, António).

The people are predominantly black (ehm, pardon, afro-american) and it is told to have some of the greatest live music joints in the area which, I am sorry to say, we ended up not checking out.

We left the city through old route 66 and stopped for the frozen custard at Ted Drewes. It's basically an ice cream, not much to write home about but somehow made it into the blogosphere.

We are now diving into the depths of the west and I get the feeling that later on I will be sorry for having spent so little time in this place.