St. Louis, Missouri
An impromptu marathon also meant a spontaneous trip to Missouri’s second-largest city, St. Louis. I had only been here once before, but for not even half a day. This trip wouldn’t be that much larger, but at least this time I was able to get closer—in fact, right below—the famous Gateway Arch.
Below is a list of what I got to do here:
- Run the Rock ‘n’ Roll St. Louis Marathon.
- Have lunch at Pho Grand Vietnamese Restaurant off Grand Boulevard, which was one of my friend Alyssa’s favorite places to eat while she was a student at Washington University.
- Visit the WashU Medical School campus with Maureen.
- Visit the Washington University main campus. It’s a beautiful campus and was neat to see where my friends Alyssa and Bryan went to school.
- Walk by (but not have enough time to enter) the World Chess Hall of Fame.
- Visit Charlie Gitto’s on The Hill, where toasted ravioli supposedly was accidentally invented. Unfortunately it was closed.
- Eat toasted ravioli at Charlie Gitto’s in downtown St. Louis, which was open. (Verdict: toasted ravioli is tasty, but not quite as good as “normal” ravioli.)
- Visit the Jefferson National Memorial and the Gateway Arch. Unfortunately, all tickets for ascending the arch were already sold out for the day. So we hung out in the history museum underneath it, which was really interesting. When I was in high school I didn’t care too much for history, but nowadays I easily can spend hours in a history museum (or, say, Wikipedia) learning how countries and cultures came to be.
The trip was short, but it was great.
