Meet me in .....

St.Louis, that's St.Lewis and definitely not St.Looey or else you get odd looks (is it just me or was this place named by a French person....?) however. Lesson 1) St.Lewis. The second lesson is if you haven't got a car forget trying to go anywhere. I am based in Chesterfield, just 20 miles from Downtown St.Louis and it took me 45mins on a bus and then a transfer to a train and a further 25mins to get to "The Arch" (down by the Mississippi). Or within 5 mins walk of it anyway - this is certainly not a pedestrian friendly part of the US.

I headed down there on Saturday and after looking at the arch - which is pretty spectacularly huge - I headed up towards the main part of town to try and find some stuff to do, something, anything, where is everything? Where are the shops, where are the people (the street scene was taken at 2pm on a Saturday)? Did someone do an evacuation of St.Louis when I wasn't looking? I have come to the conclusion that everyone lives and plays outside the city - in strip malls (that made me giggle) and out of town shopping villages. There was signs of this being reversed though, dozens of warehouses were being converted to chic apartments and bars and restaurants were coming back to service them - in a few years it could have a bit of a buzz back.

I strolled around, heading back in the direction of "home" and came across Union Station. Once a huge, heavily used rail station (it shifted a lot of the troops leaving for WWII) it is now an indoor shopping mall, but they have saved the basic architecture including the highly impressive Great Hall (photo) which was truly stunning. It also now houses the Hyatt Hotel inside the old station and it looks great sitting on an artificial lake with one heck of a lot of fish in it.

There didn't seem much else to see so I caught the metro rail and bus back and ended up going all the way to Chesterfield mall. Its a big mall about 20 mins walk from the hotel (ok, yes I could walk there) and it has a Macy's, Gap, Old Navy, cinema all the usual shops and entertainment. This trip all I bought was baseball boots for Keith but so far I have been stocking up on Gap (you can"t get it in Oz, amazing, eh), Mac makeup, Earth shoes and other goodies that are either cheaper here or you just can't get back down under.

An example of the huge differences in cost comes from simple stuff - I bought some John Frieda Frizz Ease hair gunk today. In the UK it would have cost me equivalent $8.37 US or ($9.95 AUD). In Australia the same stuff would cost me the equivalent of $11.79 US ($13.50 AUD). Here it cost me $4.60 US ($5.28 AUD) - do I feel I am getting ripped of in Australia - yup, I do, no way you can justify that with shipping costs. I think the problem is a lack of competition - might look into that when I get back.

Anyway , back to St.Louis. Everything here is big, the cars, the houses, the portions and no surprise, the people. Half a sandwich is enough for any mere mortal and an area who fries ice cream, cheesecake, ravioli and pickles (gherkins) could perhaps even teach the Scots a thing or two about poor diets. Having said that the fruit and veg on offer in the supermarket is tasty and well priced, the seasonal fruit (peaches at the moment) look amazing. Its so cheap to buy food here - both out and in the shops that I am not surprised portions are big. Put it this way - I am not going to starve in the near future!

Its a different mix of people from LA here. There are more black people and less hispanic (I have no idea of the current pc terms for non-Caucasians so sorry if that's not right). Noticeably on the bus all my fellow passengers were black or elderly white people. Is it a social or class thing? Not really sure. I guess it really doesn't make a difference more of an observation.

I am heading back off now to watch some more of the Olympics, its the woman's gymnastics and the laws of physics are once again being destroyed by young ladies in leotards. Interestingly per the American TV the US of A are leading in the medal tables - cos they just use how many instead of weighting for colour. So everyone else in the world thinks China is winning and the US thinks they are....I think there is a metaphor in there somewhere...