Photo Week #16

Last week when I checked in at the Oakland Airport on Swarm, Swarm told me that this was my fifth straight week in a row at airports. Although I am very thankful that I have the ability and freedom to travel, I think I’ll be glad to not have to go on an airplane anytime soon! One more quick weekend trip coming up to Big Sur this coming weekend (and a 12k run…) and hopefully my May will be a little quieter and local.

This past weekend, Jeremiah and I flew to St. Louis to spend the weekend there with some of his friends. I have never really traveled to the midwest before and after going there, I have to say that it is a lot quieter and flatter than I expected. First thing we did when we got off the plane was go find coffee. I’ve realized that there are a lot of things I don’t know about coffee – I always feel very awkward ordering a pour over coffee from a place that I can’t pronounce. So I just point.

The first day, we did a lot of height related things that reinforced that I am definitely scared of heights. We were able to go up to the top of the St. Louis arch (the gateway to the west, apparently) – the little pod that we rode up in reminded me of some sort of Disneyland ride, and it was a lot faster than I thought it would be! It was about four minutes to get to the top and three minutes down.

We then went to the City Museum, which is not a museum and more like a city jungle gym. In the picture below you can sort of see all the wire tubes that go from around the plane towards the building – those were all tubes that you could climb through, and let me tell you that it took a lot of effort to get myself to climb through them.

Hands down the best thing we ate in St. Louis was barbecue at Pappy’s. We ordered the ribs and the brisket, and I really liked their version of slaw as well. Unfortunately I did not have time to take photos of the food before we ate it! We also ate barbecue at Salt & Smoke, but I preferred the ribs and brisket at Pappy’s.

I also became a bandwagon Cardinals fan for a night. I think I remember in early high school watching the Cardinals win the world series… or maybe it was the Angels in middle school. Either way, I’m sorry that I don’t have a baseball team that I am loyal to but I will always be loyal to baseball game nachos and watching playoff basketball games whenever possible.

On our last full day in St. Louis, we went to this very hip and very trendy cute brunch spot (Cafe Osage) that also had a garden store attached to it. It was like what I hope my future parties and living room and garden to look like, except I wonder if by the time I have the time and money (and the ability to actually care for plants) all these things will be out of trend.

Lastly, we went to the St. Louis Art Museum where I was surprised to see that they also had a copy of Degas’ Little Dancer of Fourteen Years statue. Are there just, like, fifty of these distributed among major art museums? I generally like art museums and this one had enough art to keep me entertained for a good amount of time. I always wish I had taken more art history classes at school, although if I consider my current knowledge of math and computer science, I’m not sure that even if I had I would be able to remember the knowledge…

Look how flat it is.