September 1

This morning, we awoke late, as we had no particular reason to rise early. That, and we had decided last night to wait until the traffic cleared before going into St. Louis. So, we waited until about 9:15 before we set out for The Loop, an area of St. Louis my wife had identified as 'worthy' of our attention. We followed a similar path to the one we followed the night before, but this time around we went further in. Here are a few photos from the area:


We wandered around for quite some time. We visited the library, walked by the police station, took a look around a little outdoor marketand just bummed around. It was fun.

We saw an Ethiopian restaurant called Red Sea and had hoped to have lunch there, but it apparently is not open for lunch. Bad news; it had kitfo on the menu that was posted on the window...I wanted it. But, we made a good adjustment, and decided to have lunch at Saleem's. We had a sampling of appetizers: hummus, garlic potato dip, baba ghannouj, and fried eggplant smothered in a garlic & tomato salsa. The fried eggplant and baba ghannouj were my favorites; my wife liked them, too, but she was enamored with the garlic potato dip.

We had checked earlier on a tiny little place next to the outdoor food market; its menu was particularly interesting, Mama's Coal Pot. We went back because we wanted to know what the menu item called "snoot" was. The guy told me it is pig face, with the skin peeled off to make cracklins. I still haven't seen it or tasted it, but I want to.

After lunch and a bit more walking, we headed to the famous Arch, where we went up to the top. I could not figure out how to turn off my flash, so the photos I took at the top were not of decent quality because the double-paned glass made my flash reflect back...bad photos. I did, though, get a few photos outside, including this one that shows the scale of the arch; that's my wife standing next to it.

After our Arch trip, we went to The Hill, the famous Italian neighborhood not far from downtown. First stop was at Volpi Italian Foods, where we bought some very brilliant green olives (vacuum packed) from Italy, along with a similar pack of red olives. We also bought some sorpressa hot salame, and some anchove-stuffed olives. We then wandered to Shaw's Coffee, where I had an iced coffee and my wife had an Italian soda. The place is situated in an old bank building; we sat in a tiny safe, which was furnished with two soft chairs, a glass-topped table, and an interesting chandelier, along with hand-painted murals on 2 walls and an entire wall of safe-deposit boxes(the 4th wall was all mirrors). From there, we wandered through the streets, which were filled with incredibly narrow houses with miniature front yards; all of them had porches, only a few feet from the sidewalks. I imagine people used to, and still may, use the porches and evening walks to visit with neighbors.

For a variety of reasons, we left there about 5:30 pm and headed back to the hotel for awhile. Later, we opted for a simple, casual dinner. We found the Fenton Bar & Grill, which had an outdoor deck in front, and had our dinner there...a hamburger for me and a dozen buffalo 'trash' wings for my wife. 'Trash' wings are ostensibly especially hot, the waitress told us, because they are pulled from the grease when only partially done, dipped in hot sauce again, and then fried. They tasted OK, but they had absolutely no hint of heat. The place was obviously a neighborhood hang-out; it appeared to us that many of the people there tonight were shift workers (and their friends and family) who work at the nearby Chrysler plant.

Enough of this...more some other time.