St. Louis Missouri

This is a new realm for me. Never before have I reviewed an entire city. Actually, I was only in downtown St. Louis so it was not the ENTIRE city.

Downtown St. Louis is an arid, desolate wasteland. There is nothing. The first day I was there I asked about finding a movie theatre. They looked at me like I was from another galaxy. I found the nearest theatre to be 10 miles away.

In the first hour I was approached by two nice young men asking for change for a $10 bill. So I opened my wallet and was beat over the head and robbed. Not really, but that would have happened. How dumb do I look. 30 minutes later I was asked if I had any change. I asked "Change of underwear, change of mind? What kind of change?" He left me alone. He probably thought I was crazier that he.

At one point in my trip I went to "The Mall". It was two blocks from my hotel and is a four story mall with a lot of shops and food...100 years ago. Now there are five stores open and one restaraunt in the food court. There is also a ghetto Walgreens on the fourth floor. No escaltors and one dirty elevator is all there was to get up there. I sacraficed...I needed munchies and batteries.

I stayed at the Renaissance Grand Hotel. This is a very nice hotel with very nice ammenities for about $149/night. Good food and good service with clean rooms in a lousy location. It is the main stay place for any convention at the Americas Center so I guess it needs to be where it is.

The glutton for punishment that I am, I wandered out of my hotel and 10 blocks away to go to dinner at an Italian restaraunt. The food was fine, nothing special. On the way back I saw two horse drawn carriages and no cars and no people. St. Louis: Population 348,000 people and on a Saturday night, for 10 blocks I see no one? Are they in their caves at night or what?

I also visited the Arch. The arch is cool but getting up to the observation deck is another barrel of monkeys. $10 gets you the opportunity to be sandwiched in with four other people in a space the size of dixie cup. It is an egg shaped "pod" that elevates you 600+ feet to the top where another 1000 people are crammed onto the observation deck trying to look out of rectangular port holes located at a height where your knees have a good view of the city.

Overall St. Louis was OK at best. Weird mostly, but if you can get past the weirdness there are some nice buildings and cool things to see.