Hows my little Missourian?

A couple of weeks ago Laura and I headed out of town on our annual post-harvest getaway, and visited St. Louis. We had tons of fun!

Since moving down here I've always wanted to visit St. Louis and check it out. I went with my family several years ago but we didn't do all that much sight-seeing. I've decided that one benefit to living in central IL is a relatively close proximity to many very different flyover cities in America's heartland.

We started off at the Budweiser Brewery which was a real sight to behold. It's HUGE! There really aren't any better words to describe it other than big, large, massive, ect.

At the end of the tour we got two free beers to sample. I really don't want to complain about free beer buuut...I'm going to, the options were terrible, there was only one darker beer otherwise there were 8 or more light options. We sampled Shock Top Pumpkin wheat, which was genuinely tasty and Shock Top honeycrisp apple which tasted like a green apple jolly rancher, not a flavor I'm interested in having in beer.

After that we headed over to Shlafly and met up with our friends Anna and Tim. There we enjoyed several brews, learned a bit about the brewery's history, walked through the brewery, and had a good time in general.

Later we headed over to iTap (International Tap House) which is probably one of the best beer bars I've been to, I just wish their draft menu was updated daily.

The next day we visited The City Museum based off numerous recommendations from people. I've learned that planning a vacation from scratch isn't nearly as much fun as taking recommendations from people who have already been there. City Museum was no exception. Laura and I climbed, crawled, slithered, squeezed, slid, dragged, lifted, pushed, laughed, and pulled our way through this fantastic maze of fun. It's not really a traditional museum as much as a playground for both adults and kids. Laura and I had tons of fun running and climbing all over and we made a rule of if there is a slide you must take it. By the end we were exhausted and bruised and smiling. If you go to St. Louis, take several hours to experience City Museum.

Rooftop experience.

View from the ferris wheel.

Taking the fun way down from beneath the mantis.

Those are all soda kegs, aka a decorative wall made of homebrewer kegs.

The 10 story spiral slide.

This cross came from the hospital that inspired the original exorcism movie.

I was actually very stuck here.

Weeeeee!

If you can fit into the space, it's not off limits.

This sign pretty much sums up the City Museum.

Laura found us a great B&B outside of town in Augusta, America's first wine region. From there we spent the next day exploring some truly remarkable Missouri wines. It was a humbling experience for me because I realized I have a lot to learn to be able to make wines of this caliber regularly. By the end of our trek through 8 different tasting rooms we realized that the white wines of Missouri were more appealing to us than reds but we found gems all over the spectrum and ended up bringing back nearly two cases worth of bottles. Fortunately we won't be needing to go wine shopping again for a few months.

On our way home we paid a visit to the Gateway Arch, because really...why wouldn't you. Plus since the government finally got their shit together it was just recently re-opened. We decided not to ride up to the top to look around because when we were on the roof of the City Museum riding the ferris wheel we realized there isn't much to look at, almost nothing of interest really. But we did explore the whole westward expansion museum and got a couple of new stamps for my national park passport book.

Altogether we had a great long weekend. Plus I've realized there is more to St. Louis than a big arch and the Budweiser brewery, we could go back for another weekend and explore new adventures, and maybe we will!