St. Louis, Missouri

 Well, I know it's been a while since the last post.  I do apologize, especially to all of you who use our blog as a way to kill time at work (you know who you are).  I hope you guys didn't actually have to be productive!!  :)

In our defense, we have both been extremely busy recently and have been doing quite a bit of city-hopping.  I have a lot of catching up to do on the blog, so get ready for several new posts in the near future!

Let's backtrack a month now...Mr. and Mrs. Evans came to visit us in Missouri the last weekend in July.  Although St. Charles is beginning to grow on Johnnie and me, we decided to spend the weekend with his parents in St. Louis where all of the action is.

But we did at least show them St. Chucks and Johnnie's "quaint" work apartment in New Town.  Here is a picture of the four of us eating lunch on Friday at the Trailhead Brewery restaurant in Historic St. Charles.

Our hotel in the city was awesome!!  Have you ever seen a Marriott (in the U.S.) that looks like this???

  The hotel is in the old St. Louis Union Station building - a former passenger train terminal that at its opening in 1894 was the world's largest and busiest train station. A fun fact I just learned on Wikipedia (I know, not always accurate) is that the famous picture of Harry S. Truman holding the erroneous Chicago Tribune paper with "Dewey Defeats Truman" was taken at the St. Louis Union Station.  Truman was on his way back to D.C. from Independence, MO after the 1948 presidential election.  Pretty fun, huh?

Here is a view from the balcony on our floor, looking down on the Grand Hall (they were set up for a wedding that night).

A picture of the Grand Hall back in the day...

Pretty stained glass in the Grand Hall...

More prettiness in the Grand Hall...

One more...I couldn't get over that this was a Marriott hotel!

Friday night, we took Mr. and Mrs. Evans to our favorite Italian restaurant in "The Hill" - Cunetto House of Pasta.  The Hill is the Little Italy of St. Louis.  We have been told that you can walk in to any restaurant in The Hill and find amazing food, but we can't seem to venture out...Cunetto is that good!

On Saturday, we took a self-guided walking tour of St. Louis on our way to the Arch!

Statue of Pierre Laclede, the founder of St. Louis...

The ridiculously long line to ride to the top of the Arch...or so we thought.  This ended up being just the line to get through security.  There was another 2+ hour long line inside to buy tickets.  Sadly, we did not find this out until we were through security.  Needless to say, we left for the day, bought tickets online for Sunday (which clearly we were not originially aware you could do), and stood in this line all over again!  Was it worth it, you may ask...jury's still out.  :)

Cool reflection of the arch, when we were turned back in the direction of our hotel...

The upside of not taking the Arch tour on Saturday was that it gave us time to go and visit the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis!  The Cathedral hosts the world's largest collection of mosaic art...even more than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome!  Please refer back to my "Kansas City" post, but watch out Rome!!  Missouri has you on mosaics and almost has you on fountains!

These pictures don't even begin to do the mosaics justice...it was pretty much amazing...

Saturday night, we hit up Busch Stadium to watch a Cardinals game.  Mrs. Evans was able to get us some great tickets from a friend!

And yet the boys were more interested in their smart phones.  :)

After the game we went for some food and drinks at El Borracho, which I can happily say far exceeded my expectation for any non-Texas Mexi joint! To be honest, it didn't only meet my expectation...I think it could easily hold its own in the South!  BJ - the manager of El Borracho is a family friend of the Evans'.  It was great to meet him and we will definitely be going back to visit BJ in the coming months!

All in all, it was a great weekend!  Johnnie had to leave us all early on Sunday to fly somewhere.  I'm not going to spill the beans as to where, though.  He will tell you all about it in his very own blog post.  Don't hold your breath though...the boy is seriously busy and for some reason unbeknownst to me, blogging isn't at the top of his to-do list.  :)