Day Four: St. Louis
Going into today I honestly didn’t have high hopes for St. Louis. Sure, there’s a giant arch and a baseball stadium, but something about it seemed so underwhelming. Well, let me be the first to admit that I was wrong.
Today we decided to switch it up from tragic free hotel breakfast and get something to-go. We looked on trusted Google maps and found what looked to be a nice little bakery cafe with coffee, sandwiches, pastries, etc. The place was called St. Louis Bread Co. Upon further inspection, the description of this place was something to the effect of “Panera Bread inside of St. Louis Bread Co”. You all know Panera, right? The classic You-Pick-Two combo? Hopefully you do, otherwise this story is going to be even more lame than you may or may not already find it.
Anyway, we were thinking, “Why would an independent bakery have a Panera Bread inside of it?” Well, let me tell you what, St. Louis Bread Co. and Panera Bread are the exact same thing!!! (Crazy, I know). The same font, the same logo and everything, except instead of the logo saying “Panera” it says “St. Louis Bread Co”. Apparently, back in the 90’s, the folks at Au Bon Pain bought out St. Louis Bread Co and changed the name to Panera Bread because “pan” means bread and “era” implies timelessness. We inferred that Panera Bread locations near St. Louis were able to keep St. Louis Bread Co as their name as sort of an homage to the original St. Louis Bread Co before it was bought out. Pretty fun fact, huh? Also, this particular restaurant forgot something from our order and gave s a free cookie when we let them know something was missing, so that was a fun treat for later.
Even more exciting - Gateway Arch National Park. There’s a small but pretty park surrounding the arch that has short paved trails and a ton of very well maintained green space. We walked around the park for about an hour before it opened, and it was quite nice. We also walked through a sculpture garden in downtown St. Louis called City Garden. Our personal favorite sculpture was called Unzip the Earth (pictured below).
Once 9:00 AM hit, it was arch time. Let me tell you what, this arch is huge. 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide. That’s taller than the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, and pretty much every other tall monument you can think of. It’s almost three football fields long! It’s made of steel and was built in the 1960’s. Also, from the side this thing totally looks like the Washington Monument. Apparently the riverfront area of St. Louis was getting kinda dumpy, so they built the arch as part of an attempt to revitalize that part of town. It’s designed to be able to safely sway up to 18 feet in high winds and extreme weather. That last fact you learn after taking a teeny tiny gondola up to the top of the arch, which takes less that five minutes. Ian did not like this at all. He’s kind of claustrophobic. Overall, he did say it was worth it to take the trip up despite his mini freak out in the beginning.
Did you know that St. Louis used to be the gateway to the west? That may be common knowledge for some, but knowing nothing about the midwest, Ian and I were very impressed with how pivotal a role St. Louis played in the US expanding out west. It should also be known that A LOT of indigenous Americans and people of color were royally screwed over in this process. In the museum area of the park, it was interesting to see juxtaposing exhibits about the grand adventures of Lewis and Clark, for example, right next to a display on all of the people and cultures they harmed or displaced during their trip (of which there are many, by the way). If you ever find yourself in St. Louis, I would definitely recommend visiting Gateway Arch National Park and the museum.
Once we finished up at the park, we hit the road to Topeka, Kansas. There’s no national park or any hiking in Topeka, but it was a semi-convenient stopping point along the way. Y’all, Kansas is BORING. Oddly enough, we saw more corn driving in Illinois and Missouri. Kansas was just a whole lotta nothing. There was the occasional group of cows or horses, but otherwise not a whole lot going on. Also, once you get west of Ohio, your EZ pass will become irrelevant because every state uses its own convoluted toll system, so that was annoying.
Once we got to Topeka, we decided to keep things simple and get Panera for dinner again (actual Panera this time, too far west for St. Louis Bread Co). The Panera in Topeka next to the Walmart gets minimal stars from us because they either never made our order or someone stole it/mistakenly took it off the rapid pick up shelf. Either way, when we arrived to pick up or order that was supposedly ready, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t a big deal, though. They remade it for us and we moved on with or day.
This hotel (shoutout to the Hilton Garden Inn up on the hill behind the Walmart) was actually the nicest we’d stayed in so far. Panera, a bottle of wine, and preseason football was not a bad way to spend our one overnight in Kansas. If you’re still reading this, I hope yo enjoyed all of today’s fun facts. We sure did!
