Joel and Adam's rather long car journey: Meet Me In St Louis

300 miles ago we arrived in St Louis and once again eagle eyed Joel was the first to see this particular regions local land mark first, the fabulous Gateway Arch.

St Louis was a sight for sore eyes, mainly because when we both checked the map the previous evening in Chicago we had both read St Louis as being only 183 miles away. It wasn't. Our kindly GPS, which I have named Thomas, told us it was closer to 300 and about a 5 hour drive. This meant that while the other person was driving, the passenger got a little shut-eye because our first real leg of Route 66 was a featureless flat wasteland something akin to Cambridge - not the City of course, that's beautiful. The surrounding areas, you know fields, trees, bushes... the horizon... no hills. Yeah you get the idea. Now imagine that with a couple of 'Roman stylee' straight roads and it's like playing a real live version of 'Outrun'.

Needless to say the drive got a whole lot more interesting when we hit the torrential downpour as shown in the video in the previous post. Now that was some scary stuff. Luckily we got through it, because rain ain't no thing to real Brits. Joel clocked the Gateway Arch as the sun beamed through the clouds like a sign from god and we knew it was going to be all good.

We checked into the most expensive hotel of our trip so far. The Hyatt at Union Station was sheer decadance. Created from, as the name implies, the old main station at St Louis. The lobby was gigantic and a swear I have never seen so much marble dedicated to one building in my entire life. The flipside of the good looking hotel was the hilarity that ensued upon checking out the toilet in our room.

Not only could you conduct conference calling from the comfort of the can but the dang thing had an ethernet port for those types who just couldn't stay off the interweb. Or maybe it was for fat yanks who somehow got stuck there and needed to call a porter to wheel them out.. I just don't know.

After our unexpectedly long drive we had a nice little walk down Market St. into downtown St Louis to get a better look at this little arch thing. Needless to say this was one impressive piece of engineering and a fitting monument to commemorate Lewis & Clark's expedition to the west.

That night as Joel mentioned we had a few drinks to celebrate... Err.... Thursday. At $1 each we had quite a few, ok we had a lot. Then we found a club called Buca and listened to Hip-Hop and Drum and Bass. Which neither of us particularly liked, so we headed back to the hotel.

JULY the 4th came and we headed to breakfast as I loaded my plate up with bacon and eggs I was beginning to feel decidedly unwell, and left breakfast uneaten and Joel sucking down coffee. Having a little sleep I woke up to see Joel had found the latest episodes of Doctor Who online and was catching up with the latest David Tennant adventures. And such was the July 4th parade for us! We made up for our late day by doing the American thing and going to see Hancock at the local movie theatre and came back to the most fantastic fireworks show we had seen since Wednesday.

The next morning we got up ludicrously early (not hungover) and ventured back to the Gateway Arch to ride the tiny little trams up to the top to check out St Louis from over 600 feet inside a giant tringular sardine can. Classic claustrophobia for some but a glorious view for us.