Saturday, April 17, 2010
Went to St. Louis today and had a really good time. Ceecee and I go to St. Louis about once a month, usually right around payday. Sometimes it’s for the weekend, but a lot of times it’s just a day trip. We “discovered” St. Louis over the 4th of July in 2009 when we spent the weekend there.
I remember passing by on vacations when I was a kid with my family and thinking, “What a horrible place.” It always seemed awful from the car windows going by on I-70.
When we moved to Missouri – and especially when people would find out that my wife is Italian – they would say, “You know about The Hill, right?” As time went by, we came to understand that The Hill was an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis and people would talk about it like it was this wonderful place. I couldn’t imagine anything in St. Louis being nice, but eventually, we decided to go check it out.
Over a Fourth of July weekend, we got a room for two nights and completely fell in love with not only The Hill, but the whole city. We discovered Forest Park, which is bigger than New York City’s Central Park and houses the Zoo, Art Museum, History Museum (which are all free) and much more. We went to Soulard’s, a huge farmer’s market down by the river, and we ate one of the best meals I’ve ever had at Charlie Gitto’s, one of the many Italian restaurants on The Hill.
Anyway, we went today and had a lot of fun. We went to Soulard’s, got orange cream soda at Fitz’s, had a picnic in Forest Park, and spent time at The Hill, of course. We shop for Italian groceries while we’re there, and we always go to one of the bakeries for treats and bread. We’ve talked about maybe living here someday, but we’ll see.
The Restoration Tour 