St. Louis is definitely a cool city. I have always looked at it as Kansas City’s big brother. I love to Arch, wonder what is would be like to have pro hockey, really like the downtown area, and have some great friends who live there.

The reason we left for St. Louis on Thursday evening was to get us a head start on our journey. Since we were doing a Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives tour, it made since to have the journey start there. We picked the Hyatt Downtown as our hotel because they had an Arch Package which was suppose to get you tickets to the arch so you didn’t need to arrive early and wait in line. That ended up not working cause the arch had been selling out every day and they were no longer accepting the hotels tickets. No biggie and the hotel did try very hard to get us tickets, but we just took our chances in the line and waited. We walked over to the park and had to wait for about 20 minutes for the doors to open and had tickets after another 20 minutes of waiting in line and at that point walked right up and were able to get to the elevators.

I want to stop here to have a little aside. I don’t know who started the rumor that the arch ride is scary but it is not. You do sit in a small pod, but it like the accent on a roller coaster to the top of the first drop and an elevator with no windows outside. Nothing to be afraid of here if you aren’t claustrophobic. If you are afraid of small spaces, stay clear of this ride. Once you get to the top, you walk up 10 to 30 stairs depending on which car you were in (lower the number the less stairs you climb) and you are then at the top in a decent sized room where you look out the windows. Beautiful view of the city. I don’t typically like heights, but this felt like being inside a building and not hang out on a roof.

Here is the view from the arch: