Meet me in St. Louis

Some things I learned this week:

1. While I've heard for years about the uber-prestigious medical school at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, I didn't know how striking the collegiate-gothic campus would be. I looked around and said, "This is the sort of place where people wear suits (not the students, of course, but the grown-ups)."


2. The business school at WashU includes a lovey hotel for their executive education program with seminars and conferences and all that. How many business schools house a hotel?


3. I alway knew I loved hotels that provide a good breakfast; I now know I also love hotels with a "Guest Pantry" stocked with complimentary snacks, a fridge with drinks (non-alchoholic, of course), microwave, etc.


4. When a fire alarm goes off in a hotel at 3 am, not everybody leaves the building; and of those that do, not everyone remembers shoes, jacket, or room key (though between the two of us, we got all those essentials); also, some people wear funny things--like boxers with a suit coat.


5. Even though St. Louis, MO, isn't listed among the top 50 biggest cities in the U.S., it has a city park bigger than NY's Central Park.

(In Forest Park, St. Louis)



6. The park, called Forest Park, was originally the site of the 1904 World's Fair (remember that old movie with Judy Garland, "Meet Me in St. Louis"?) and is surrounded by gorgeous leafy neighborhoods with houses that look like they could have been in the movie. Gorgeous!


(That big building behind me is the Art Museum--not too shabby)



7. In its 1293 acres (really, it goes on forever) the park has a free history museum (pretty cool), a free zoo (not a skimpy zoo, either; the penguins were up-close and awesome), a golf course (not the sort of thing I'm personally into), a beautiful art museum, tons of open fields and ball fields, enough paths to keep you biking for hours (looks like it--I didn't put that hypothesis to the test), gardens, streams, ponds, fountains and a variety of bridges, and (yes) an actual forest. I think there's other stuff, too, that I didn't get around to seeing.


(I never could get myself and the animals in the same shot)



8. The roads that go through the park twist and turn and get you all turned around and confused. I'm just saying.
   
9. A one-day conference that goes from 8 am to 9 pm is really a two-day conference that's been crammed into one day. And even if you have a lot of cool stuff to see and do, if you're by yourself you begin to feel the need to talk to someone.


10. The neighborhood, Dogtown, in which I set the opening of my book is not one of the pretty ones, which I figured, since it's by the old factories. But it is surprisingly close to the river and downtown. On the map it looks way out there (and if you can only get around by walking or horses, it would seem pretty far), but you can actually see the Arch from the top of the hill.


11. The Gateway Arch is huge-normous! You cannot fit a person and the whole arch into one photo.

(You can barely see Uchenna as a tiny figure, with portions of the Arch)




(Ahh, here's one way to get your picture with the whole Arch--go for the model in the museum underneath)

12. You might think the Arch just sits on a little park area overlooking the river, but that simple grassy area is completely deceiving--underneath is a big ol', cool history museum, complete with theaters and animitronics. It's called the history of westward expansion, which you know is basically the history of the whole country.
    
    

    (In the hidden history museum under the grass)



(We love finding references to our own history in national contexts)

13. While it may not be in the top 50 US cities right now, historically St. Louis is one of the most important places in the country: Louis and Clark launched from there, Oregon Trail pioneers went through there, it had a bunch of industry, it was the northern-most navigable place on the Mississippi, it hosted the World's Fair and the first Olympics in the US, plus the whole Charles Lindburgh and the "Spirit of St. Louis" thing. Just remember that all the western cities except San Francisco (like L.A., Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas and Houston) were either non-existant or cattle outposts, so St. Louis was the unchallenged dominant western city.
    
14. You can go up inside the Arch to the top if you're willing to spend $10 per person, so we figured we'd catch it next time.