Pouring in Missouri

Today I was going to get to my goal # 4 ( see "let the music play in Tennessee" and "preparations fo the green holiday")

After more driving following Dr. Nightmare's left and right turns, this is the first picture I was able to take out of the car window:

 

 

I could take my time taking pics from the passenger seat because there were lots of other cars wanting to make their way into St. Louis. The building on the right side was responsible for it. It is the Busch Stadium where the St. Louis Cardinals were playing against the Texas Rangers. 

 

Now I don't know the slightest thing about baseball. I just saw lots of fans with Holliday or Molina Jerseys.

At this point let me also mention that during our stay in the USA there aren't just the ice hockey finals Chicago Blackhawks vs Boston Bruins going on, but also basketball San Antonio Spurs vs Miami Heat.

 

 

And I always thought Miami Heat was a body lotion ;-)

Wait, that was Malibu, not Miami. My bad.

 

 

 

It was still over 90°F in the late afternoon / early evening, and after some soccer in the park, we made our way to the hotel which was way outside of the city.

I guess all the downtown, midtown and uptown rooms were taken by the
baseball fans. Or by BJC Health Care employees for that matter.

They were having some family event in the park.

• We were driving by and saw the bouncy castles.
• We found a parking space.
• We did have quarters for it.
• We were feeling really lucky!

Until we were about to walk through the entrance. Some nasty people wanted to know if we worked for this company, and where were our light blue bracelets?

 

 

 

BUMMER! We removed the label of our water bottle

(it was light blue) and wrapped it around Colin's wrist.

It JUST didn't work out :-(

 

So we went to HRC for lunch. And it was a bad experience. The receptionist lady had a tablet to administer the guests. Party of 8 for Snow White, you know the drill. Just there were very few people and acutually a lot of tables. Used tables, as in full of empty plates, dirty napkins, but kind of available. And nobody cared to clear them. Waiters were cruising by, balancing one single glass of water. There were also some tables that looked totally fine.

 

I was sticky-sweaty, hungry and still sad about the playground thing, and I wanted a table, and I wanted it now. I was THIS CLOSE to ask for a tray so I could take care of clearing our own table. Just, I didn't want to be the nagging foreigner so I asked the iPad lady if there was something wrong with those tables, or would it be possible to get one, please?

 

She looked at me if I had escaped from the nut house, tapped on her tablet, asked "how many people did you say you were?" STILL THREE!!! "Oh! then they should have called you a while ago!" Let me mention that if those tables were in plain sight for me, so were they for her.

 

Well, the whole waiting for our lunch took so long that when we finally got out again there were rolling thunders, lightnings and heavy rain! The Hard Rock Cafe in St. Louis is located in the former Union Station which is now a great mall, and part of the outdoor space is open; the other one covered, and there is a "lake" where you can rent pedalos.

 

 

It was getting late, and due to the fact that there wasn't a hotel room available in the greater St. Louis area we had to drive to Illinois. So hubby got the car, and we ran through the pouring rain to get in.

 

On the freeway there must have happened a major accident because we needed almost an hour for just a mile or two. But then we were on our way.



 

 

St. Louis is certainly a city we want to come back to!

But for now we are leaving pouring Missouri.