This is part four of many. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip.
Friday, June 23:
The Best Breakfast in Farmington, Missouri, according to whatever web sites I checked, is at the Factory Cafe, which has two locations: one out on the highway and one downtown. I picked the one downtown. It's located in an old factory building, along with a number of other shops. It did have excellent food and good prices, though the service could have easily been better.
It was then only about an hour and a half to St Louis. Since I'd decided the night before not to set my usual 6AM alarm for that reason (why bother?) and had slept until 7:30, then had a leisurely breakfast, we didn't get into the city until after noon. We made the Third Degree Glass Studio our first stop; when I visited here a few years ago with my friend Marty, I found it had some novel and inspired works of unusual quality. This time, not so much. There was still the quality, but almost everything had a derivative quality about its design, and the colour choices of the various artists fell only into two categories: mundane and garish. After a good look around the gallery, we had a pleasant lunch at Blueberry Hill. So, that was two boxes ticked. That left us with a few hours to kill in the city before we headed across the river into Illinois, where our hotel is.
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| 1931 Chrysler Imperial |
With the exception of one ragged-looking 1960 Volkswagen Beetle that seemed to have been fresh from the barn, all the cars there are in excellent shape. Many of them were of no great interest to me: muscle cars such as I've seen over and over in fifty other places (including on the street). And while I love certain muscle cars -- certain Chevy Malibus and Pontiac Grand Prix and GTOs -- I no longer get excited by them. Commonplace classics like '55, '56 and '57 Chevies. The kind of angular supercars that titillate the twits on the old Top Gear series, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and later-model Corvettes: Lambos have always been ugly; Ferrari makes mostly ugly cars, though with some stunning exceptions; and Vettes haven't really been pretty since the third generation was discontinued in 1984; each one since (4th through 8th, so far) has gotten progressively uglier.
There are lots of mid-engined sports cars with poorly balanced proportions, like Audi R8's and Porsche Cayennes on display; and ubiquitous models like Porsche 911s. Seen one, seen 'em all, or don't care because they're not really that attractively designed. They're just powerful, loud and fast, and I don't care about that because they're just sitting there on the floor. Maybe if I were driving them I'd be more interested, though I doubt they're as comfortable on a road trip as my gorgeous little Jag. And there are cars that are only remarkable because they're expensive, and therefore relatively rare, like the 1996 Rolls Royce Silver Spur, which has nothing beyond the nameplate to make it desirable. And there are some vehicles that are clearly held as bets on future value, like the Hummer and the gussied-up Dodge Durango.
(The Rolls, by the way, is for sale with an asking price of less than $23,000. Keep in mind that anyone who sees you in it will assume you bought it new for six figures.)
By the time I finished going through the museum, it was nearly 4pm; too late to do anything else in St Louis. So we crossed over to our hotel in Collinsville, Illinois, where we're booked for three nights. It's the same hotel I've stayed in on both previous visits to St Louis. I really wanted to stay on the Missouri side this time, but the hotels over there are so much more expensive and not really worth the added costs. That, and in one case, a hotel I was all set to book despite the price wanted to add nearly a third of the price in "taxes and fees", but wouldn't tell me what the "fees" were. ("See our Terms and Conditions." I did: the information wasn't there.) And after we checked into our hotel, I started work on this blog, finishing up yesterday's post on Day 3, and writing up the start of our St Louis sojourn. After getting to this point, we went downtown (Collinsville) to find a place where my wife and I ate when we were here a couple of years ago. It wasn't quite where I remembered it, and even now, having just been there, I can't remember the name of it; but we found it and had dinner there and I've decided it will be a good place to watch the US whoop up on Jamaica tomorrow night (fingers crossed).
Thus endeth the first day in St Louis.
Saturday, June 24:
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| Gateway Arch from Illinois |
Afterwards we crossed the Eads Bridge into St Louis and went to see the Graffiti Wall, a stretch of retainer wall built for the use of random graffiti artists. There was nothing the least bit impressive on it, so after scanning it from the comfort of the car, we went on to brunch at a place called The Egg, on Gravois Avenue. It's a trendy place, apparently, but has a very nice ambience about it. We both had something called "beermosa" -- Hefeweizen and orange juice. It wasn't too bad, but I'd never order it again. I got pulled pork cornbread Benedict. It had two slices of sweet corn bread under three slices of nicely barbecued pork belly, topped with two poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce. On the side was a generous portion of perfectly fried potatoes.
From there we went to the St Louis Museum of Fine Arts, in Forest Park. Roland parked himself on a sofa in the first room he came to and stared at a crappy Max Beckmann painting for about four hours while I explored what I could in that time. I saw a few Assyrian animal sculptures and Greek and Roman pieces before tracking down some paintings. If there is a coherent order to the many galleries in this museum, it isn't obvious to me, but each room has a theme, even if it's not connected to that of the next room.
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| Martin, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion |
At that point we had nothing really to do, so we drove back over to our hotel in Illinois and relaxed until it was time to go to dinner. Some source I had checked had recommended a place called Rigazzi's in The Hill, the Italian neighbourhood in St Louis, and since we had no other information, we went there. It was in an early-twentieth-century house, expanded and converted, in a mixed residential and industrial neighbourhood. I'm not aware of a comparable area in San Antonio.
Even though we'd come early (6:30) there was a wait for a table that ran to about 45 minutes. Then we faced slow, indifferent service: a long wait for drinks, a long wait to order, a long wait for our salads, a long wait for our food, a long wait for our check (even after we'd asked for it). I'd give the service one chili pepper out of five. The food was meh at best. The salads were out of a bag, the bread was off the shelf, the pasta was heavy and overly salty. Two chili peppers out of five.
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| Capone at Rigazzi's |
Once back at our hotel, we threw our leftovers in the fridge and I headed out to watch the US:Jamaica match in the Gold Cup competition at the tavern we'd been to the night before. (I still can't remember the name of it!) I got there a few minutes before the match started, concerned about getting a good seat. I needn't have been. I was one of about 20 people in there. I had a table with a clear view of the match on a large screen. My shot of bourbon cost me five bucks (I just had the one) and the Diet Coke I portion it in to was free. With refills, it lasted me the whole match, which by the was was a fairly exciting (as in frustrating) draw, 1:1. The US has sent its B team to the Gold Cup, not the first time US Soccer has entered a tournament it didn't take particularly seriously; but at least in this case there's the excuse that all the top players featured in the Nations League final just a week or so before, and they're back with their clubs across Europe. This tournament will be a test of BJ Callaghan's abilities as a coach. Can he get this second-tier group of MLS and Liga MX players to gel? Can he get them to the semifinal? The final? Or will they somehow contrive to not win their group of minnows? The world awaits.
Sunday, June 25:
Our original plan was to spend Sunday in St Louis too, but since we'd pretty much done all the stuff I really wanted to do (and there was nothing in particular that Roland wanted to do) we've decided to move on. I told the desk clerk this yesterday morning, but he apparently didn't make note of the fact. So there was a discussion with the clerk this morning, but it worked out as it should have. As I finish writing up this blog post, Roland has found a tennis match on TV to ignore while he surfs Tik Tok. I expect he hardly slept at all last night, but he'll sleep in the car as soon as we get going.
And, as I told Roland: Italian food is usually better as leftovers than as fresh food, even the best of it. The leftovers I had from last night were an exception.
