This road trip has been nothing short of a whirlwind, and I'm starting to feel like this week is gonna be closer to a Tornado (literally) than a whirlwind.... We're planning to stop in St Louis, Pittsburgh, Lancaster (Amish country) and Philadelphia, before landing in Brooklyn NYC on Saturday! Here goes nothing!
We woke up in our cozy hotel room in St Louis and were faced with another threat of a tornado!! EEekkkk! The darn things were following us! We hunkered down for an hour or so, drinking our coffee and munching on the continental breakfast downstairs before the storm passed and the coast was clear...
And boy was the coast clear - look at that beautiful 630 ft arch, surrounded by a perfectly clear blue sky!! Can you spot me down below?
It was the perfect day for a picnic in the park - sadly we weren't prepared with food, so we just sat and enjoyed the grass and view of the river instead!
The arch, from below.
I'd love to say that we tried some famous St. Louis toasted ravioli, local style pizza, pork steaks, gooey buttercake or one of the city's many beers (It is beer capital of the US after all) while we were in town, but we actually just grabbed a blue raspberry Slurpee here instead and made turkey sandwiches in the car! haha Hey, a 3 month road trip can get expensive, so we have to be cheap budget savy sometimes!
We took a walk through the Gateway Arch park and saw an old church off in the distance and walked towards it to check it out... Turns out, it's the Basilica of St Louis, the very first cathedral West of the Mississippi (I love typing that word!)! It was stunning.
... and for $3.00, you could light your very own prayer candle.
We left the Basilica of St Louis and made our way out of town towards Louisville, until we saw this GEM, the Cathedral Basilica of St Louis, built in 1914, which slightly (no, more like majorly) trumped the last cathedral was saw! I mean look that this place!
We had the chance to go inside for about 5 minutes, before the mass began, to get a glimpse of the incredible work of art! The cathedral walls are adorned with 41.5 million glass tesserae pieces in more than 7,000 colors! The mosaics cover 83,000 sq feet, making it one of the largest mosaics in the world, and definitely the most amazing one I've ever seen! What I would give to photograph a wedding in this cathedral - WOW!
We hated to say goodbye to St. Louis, just like we've hated to say goodbye to every other city we've visited, but were on a mission, and excited to get over to Louisville, Kentucky!