Just before we start today's blog... Need to share a funny story with you all. The bus driver we had for our Washington tour ended each sentence with mmm-mmm... Hannah has picked this little mannerism up and now does it without thinking!!! ( 13 times and still counting today!) We started off with a visit to the chain of rocks bridge which was the original route 66 crossing of the Mississippi river... The river is very low and we could see schools of carp swimming. It is a pedestrian bridge we were walking on the actual road. We then drove onto St Louis and visited the huge Gateway arch... This included going in a small pod to the top of the arch... All 630 feet in the air ... The ride up was a tad hairy but the views were fantastic... They also have a fantastic museum which outlined the expansion into the west of the country. We thenstopped at the old union station where we had lunch, met Ed who loved our name tags, and we were enthralled by the unbelievably huge number of fish in the fishponds around the station. This was then followed by a tour of the Anheusery-Busch brewery (Budweiser beer)... This was brewing on a grand scale... With even a chandelier in the horse stables !!! At the end of the tour we were allowed two free drinks. We ended up having their 8% alcohol content brew with a blueberry taste... Hannah ended up sculling this as we had to get on the bus... Well didn't that go straight to her head with a gigglefest all the way to our hotel... Very funny to watch !!!! We then went to a 'be your guest' BBQ... Which is very different to our BBQs... It is really an art form ... They enter competitions in BBQ-ing!!!! The food was glorious (yes... Ribs again). After tea and ice cream (they call it frozen custard) we had a team cook off to make a BBQ sauce which was great fun and a good way of getting to know each other. We then came back to the hotel and finished off the night with a couple of drinks in the bar. We are having some technical issues at the moment... So unable to download photos at this stage.