Gateway to the West postponed

Well Dennis finally caught up with me. With the bus not leaving for Chicago until the small hours of the morning I though I might as well go catch a movie. While St Louis is a very nice place (more about that later) it does have the misfortune of being one of those suburban cities. A very good book about the place is Johnathan Franzen's 27th city; anyway this meant going miles out into St Louis County by metre and then, according to Mapquest, a short walk. Well it took an hour all the while the remnants of Dennis were falling from the heavens. St Louis is also a place where is seems all but impossible to spend money, I didn't see one McDonalds, BK, Wendys etc and hardly anywhere else to get something to eat. Then the one place you think would charge to get a tour of doesn't, but then when you sell 1 out of every 2 beers sold in the US I'm sure you can afford to show a few people how for free. The Anheuser-Busch brewery was actually quite beautiful and ornate, well worth it and you get two free brews at the end. While some may think two free Buds is hardly worth it I would agree but there are other options that actually do have some flavour.

The Gateway Arch is a spectacular peice of engineering and truly beautiful. The trip to teh top is pretty cool too, you get in these little egg shaped capsules and get hauled up 630ft and great views of the city and the might Mississippi. I haven't said anything about that the aorta of America yet. It's not as wide as I thought it would be but you can see that it's still formidible and the fact that it's going to take me three days by bus to follow it right up is mind boggling.

And so just about dead from tiredness and after a thourough soaking I'm heading north to Chicago and not West as so many others did.