48 Hours To and From

48 Hours to and from: Episode 1--St. Louis, MO

A Travel Column for the poor, young, beautiful, fun

and those who are lacking in vacation days

The inaugural edition

Destination: St. Louis, MO (300 miles from our beloved Chicago)
Participants: AML, Jon
Plan of action: To get AML’s brother an apartment in St. Louis; to have fun times; to see historic sites.

The (ideal) itinerary:
Friday

5 PM leave airport with car, drive like the rad ass bitches we are, listen to tunes;

7 PM stop for dinner at Steak and Shake, or similar;

9 PM roll in to Litchfield IL and find a motel10 PM buy beers, watch cable TV

Saturday:

8 AM wake up, swim/run, shower, breakfast

9:30 AM roll out to St Louis

11 AM The Arch

12-5 PM Apartment hunt; find sweet place, sign lease

6 PM check in to hotel, swim,. shower

7 PM go in search of dinner/good times/gay bars

Sunday

9 AM get up and check out

10 AM Brunch

11 AM leave St Louis

1 PM Lincoln Times (ie, the Lincoln Museum in Springfield); lunch

3 PM leave Springfield

6 PM return to airport, return car, go home

First things first: a lesson for the young and impressionable about car rentals. My boyfriend and my mom yelled at me about this, so it must be true: don’t get the special insurance. It’s a rip off. Also, fill the tank up with gas yourself, even if it is more expensive. They make you pay for a whole tank.

In general, it is awesome to go on vacation on another person’s dime. In this case, my mom paid for our magical trip because I was doing a favor for my younger brother. This was truly sweet and incredibly generous. But do not let this deter you from getting good deals! Seriously, everything is more expensive than you think it is. I must have paid well over $100 in taxes to the rental car people and the hotel people. Ridiculous. (Yeah, I know, it pays for public schools.)

It is also awesome to travel with people who love to drive. I do not love to drive. I like it, but it wears thin after about 2 hours. Jon loves to drive. It’s kind if intense. We named our car “Jetta 2: The Wrath of Khan.” We also called the car Jetta 2 Fast and the Wrath of Fast. This was because we got to drive a Jetta (grey, no sunroof), which was awesome, and because at night the audio panel gives off a strange red glow and the side mirrors have blinkers on them, making the car a lot like a space ship.

I learned a lot on this trip about traveling rad (read: traveling not like a complete jack ass) in the car. I usually fly. For instance:
Don’t leave Chicago at 6 PM on a Friday night and not expect traffic.
Keep abreast of any major construction between you and where you are going.
Make sure you check the weather at your destination. If there National Guard has been called in (which in our case actually happened), it might not be the best weekend to take a little vacation.
Buy gas in economically depressed location, it’s cheaper.
Maps! Maps! Maps!
The iTrip, playlists galore, and apparently, several Sufjan Stevens CDs.

Now, when I was told that I was supposed to go to St. Louis, I was a little skeptical. I’d always heard it was dull and hot, not a good combination. Being a Californian living in the Midwest, I have a certain amount of prejudice against other cities in the breadbasket and rustbelt of America. This is mainly because of an adage I was told when I moved to Chicago, that “everyone who lives in Chicago is from someplace shittier in the Midwest, hence, bitterness.” This is not really the case, it’s just my personal prejudice. I’m trying to be honest.

Travel tip: pick up a copy of the local free paper. Everything you need is in there. Seriously. In St. Louis, it’s the River Front Times. In Chicago, the Reader. Check the paper’s website for “Best of” and Top Ten lists as well. Everything good that happened to us happened because of the local paper. I even got some good advice in the RFT’s “Ask a Negro Leaguer” column.

First stop: Steak and Shake in Bloomington, Illinois. Embrace the junk food. Hug it. Love it. We saw this guy with a brand new tattoo, which is pretty gross. His girlfriend had hot chocolate and a salad. There was also a smoking section, which is genius. Steak and Shake has the best milkshakes.

Word to the wise: I have an irrational love of signs. As soon as we got near Springfield, many magical brown signs advertising the Lincoln Museum and “Other Historic Sites” began to pop up. I love historic sites. I also love the idea of Lincoln site and other historic sites.

We decided, fairly arbitrarily, to stop in Litchfield, Illinois, for the night. Litchfield is 50 miles form Springfield and 50 miles form St. Louis, has a deep love of The Good lord, and a Rural King (www.ruralking.com). We did not make a reservation in advance. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem. But St. Luis was being evacuated because of a very bad set of storms earlier in the week. We got, literally, the last hotel room in a 200 mile radius of Litchfield. We shared a king sized bed in a smoking room and drifted off to sleep with the cable on. We did not smoke or do it.

The next morning: Jon actually went for a jog, and we decided to bypass the Denny’s next door in anticipation of adorable hipster coffee shop breakfast in St. Louis. We were not disappointed. We got in around 11 a.m. Obviously, we had to forego the Arch in favor of finding my brother a place to live. We had coffee and bagels in a cute little coffee shop in the Lafayette Square neighborhood of St. Louis, west of downtown. So cute. All sorts of rehabbed warehouse loft type spaces, trendy restaurants, and a pretty park.

Apartment hunting interlude: not only was this boring and hot, but it was frustrating as all get out.

Word to the Wise: real estate in St. Louis is very affordable. Seriously. A nice, big 1 BR for $550 a month? We love it. Neither of us will ever be able to own property, so we didn’t look at actual listings. The flipside is that St. Louis is a CAR kind of town.

The one thing we did learn was that the U-City Loop, also called the Delmar Loop, is fun and a half. Cute shops, a “pipe store,” several nice restaurants and bars, and Blueberry Hill (the music venue), as well as a daily outdoor market. Very fun, especially if you like outside beer times, used books and CDs, and college kids. This is, obviously, the hang out for all people Wash U, which my brother will be in about 3 weeks.

Our next adventure took us to our hotel, which was drastically overpriced and on The Hill. Meh. It smelled bad and wasn’t actually close to anything. Stay downtown. I think it’s probably way more fun.

Speaking of Downtown, we went to The Arch. Well, we went up in it. We also went to the Museum of the Western Expansion. St. Louis, imbued with a deep desire to fight its sleepy river town image, has styled itself the Gateway to the West. This is fairly awesome, and The Arch truly does a wonderful job of representing the vastness and scope of America’s pioneering history. It’s very impressive, and the museum is quite good. There are animatronic statues of Merriwether Lewis and a Native America, so you can get, you know, both perspectives. But the real treat is going all the way up to the top of the arch and then looking out over East St. Louis, or just regular St. Louis. Really breathtaking. Also, we want you to know that no matter what you do, you can’t take a bad picture of the arch itself, as long as you are standing within 25 feet of its base. No joke.

Off to dinner! Jon picked a restaurant called 1111Mississippi, in Lafayette Square, that has, according to the RFT, the best wine list in the city. To this list, Jon and I humbly submit, Hottest Waiter. We had a fantastic meal, very fancy, and very well-priced for the quality. Fancy dinner is the best!

No 48 Hours To and From will ever be complete without a trip to the local swath of gay bars. Jon had looked up a great one, and we went to find it after dinner. We got lost, and then we were found. We found the neighborhood, but our bar was closed due to a power outage in the Central West End. We went to a Lesbian bar called Novack’s that was running on generators. It was so cute. I bought a beer cozy. Then we went across the street to Freddies’, a quintessential gay bar, complete with show tunes night (Wednesdays). Cute boys, and a $1 PBR special on “college night.” Make of that what you will. Medium-sized Midwestern City Gayborhood was adorable. MANchest(H)ER Street was a big hit.

The next morning, we were up semi-early, and went for brunch in Soulard, one of St. Louis’ older traditionally black neighborhoods that is slowly but surely gentrifying and generally turning out pretty darned cute. Soulard is also supposedly full of ‘mos, but that was secondary. We went to the Soulard Coffee Garden Café. I had eggs (well, one egg and fruit salad) while Jon had a cute omelet. They had funky hippie art on the wall. It was cute and very affordable. Big cups of coffee, too, and the restaurant was obviously populated by a ton of regulars. I was also pleased to see that it didn’t get busy for food until 11 a.m., which means that St. Louis enjoys its brunch instead of turning it into some kind of competitive sport. What’s the point of breakfast drinks if you are too tired to enjoy them?

On the road again! More Sufjan Stevens took us all the way to Springfield, where we enjoyed Lincoln Sites and Other Historic Sites. We went to the brand-spanking new Lincoln Presidential Museum, Lincoln’s Tomb, and the Capitol Building. It was pretty awesome. The Lincoln Museum was very Disneyland-ish to me, but full of interesting information. I had my picture taken with Frederick Douglass (not the real one, a statue). Special exhibit of the summer was all about the first ladies, from Martha to Laura. Ha! Some of those first ladies were hotties. Lincoln’s Tomb was much more somber, and definitely more like what I’m used to in terms of historic sites. Quiet. It has a “No Cell Phones” sign out front. Lincoln was a cool dude. It was nice to bask is the dim light of the gigantic box underneath which he is buried. He did good stuff for our country. The Capitol was okay. Nothing too mind-blowing. Definitely “other.”

And then we were on our way home! It was about 3 hours from Springfield to return to rental car, which was, as I said before, way too expensive. But now I know.

All in all, a successful trip.

Important links:
The Riverfront Times: http://www.rftstl.com/
1111 Mississippi: http://www.1111-m.com/eleven-eleven/main.html
The Arch: http://www.gatewayarch.com/
Lincoln Times!: http://www.alplm.org/home.html
Novack’s: http://novaksbar.com/
Freddie’s: http://www.freddiesbar.com/
Wash U: http://www.washu.edu/
The U City Loop: http://www.ucityloop.com/
LaFayette Square: http://www.lafayettesquare.org/
Weather: http://www.weather.com
Maps: http://maps.google.com