Day 39- 28 May - 4hr drive Lexington to St Louis, Missouri - all easy Interstate driving, no problems. We all rate American roads, National Parks, breakfasts, the politeness of ordinary people, the good service of staff in restaurants and the general culture of honest hard-work.
We drove over the Mississippi River into St Louis City (population 2million) about 1.00pm found our AirBnb easily in the downtown area. Then couldn’t work how the hell to get into the place. We were soon surrounded by homeless people, all looking for money - some pretty clearly on some sort if substance. It wasn’t comfortable. Eventually, after several phone calls we discovered that buried unobtrusively in the deluge of earlier emails, was a link to “check in” instructions. These AirBnb guys could use a lesson in communication!!
Once we got on the right page it was all go and about a hour after we had arrived we finally got into the apartment, unpacked and had a little siesta. The place is a concrete bunker - Seft says this industrial style is quite common these days for inner city accommodation Definitely not my style!!
We wandered down to The Gateway National Park - so called gateway to the west. Nice place, big inner city grassy place beside the Mississippi, crowned this huge (>600ft high) steel arch - see pic. We sat on the grass (29deg C) and pondered on the reality of US westward expansion and what good and bad was being commemorated here.
The heat got to us, went for a beer at a nearby bar, which turned out to be Hooters. The waitresses were nice, but the beer bad. After 1 beer we couldn’t take it anymore and left to go to the Bridge Tap House - a very good place with 42 different beers. We had a couple and a cheese board. Then it was home to another new bed - a not to bad one actually.