St. Louis

I love St. Louis!

St. Louis is good food, friendly people, and of course the Arch.

My earliest memory of St. Louis is going up in the Arch on a family vacation. Packed into the egg-like elevators and swaying gently at the top while we looked out over the city. 

I also remember getting stranded in St. Louis during an ice storm when all the flights were downed and we were trying to get to Iowa for Christmas (remember when flying as a family of 5 was affordable??). This was back when the economy was good and the airlines could afford to put us up in a nice hotel for a couple nights, with food vouchers to the hotel's steakhouse, plus incidentals (I got a Howard the Duck t-shirt in the hotel gift shop since our luggage wasn't getting off the plane with us).

In high school my mom and I visited the Washington University campus and shopped at The Loop. It would have been an amazing place to go to college, but I would have ended up with a ton of shopping debt!

On a road trip with college friends we drove past the Arch in the middle of the night and got to see it all lit up. 

A few years ago I texted a picture of the Arch to my boyfriend in Kansas City, alerting him to the fact that I was on my way to surprise him for his birthday.

Last year I spent a long weekend in St. Louis with my coworkers while we attended and wrote about a convention at the Edward Jones Dome.

Yesterday and today I'm simply hanging out in the city, en route to my grandma's house in Arkansas. So far, an old man in a wheelchair told me he liked my hair cut. A young Jimmy Johns delivery boy smiled bright enough to light up the sun and told me to enjoy the fullness of the day. Boys played football beneath the Arch, ran stairs and did burpees. Couples played corn hole and took pictures of each other attempting to run up the side of the Arch. A man bent down to pick up a receipt that I dropped even though he knew I would have to help him back up. I told a homeless man I liked his shoes (they were blue). A police officer escorted me across the street to make sure I avoided the pieces of bumper that littered the intersection after a recent accident. I had a delicious lunch at Mango and am enjoying a random hotel's free wifi. 

Like I said, I love this city!

EMBRACE ST. LOUIS.

Do you have a favorite St. Louis memory?