St Louis - Going through the Gateway

A chance in the schedule to spend a whole day looking around St Louis - a city built on the Mississippi river at the Illinois/Missouri border. First stop was the Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Now, I have been up many towers for the view over the years (indeed, you can see evidence on many of the posts below!) but I have never been up an arch - until now! You go up in a small capsule train (see below for a carriage), with each carriage seating 5 - pity the families of 4 who had me added to their carriages! At the top there are good and clear views looking in both directions, as you go up and down the top of the arch.

After this I had a look round the Old State Courthouse (where the Dread-Scott slavery case was heard) which also housed a small history of the local area. I then drove out to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Contemporary Art Museum which were next door to each other. Adding to my good luck with galleries, Saturday was one of only two days the Pulitzer was open and was the day the CAM was free! The CAM was particularly impressive in terms of what it offered (as a small museum) - you had the option (for free) to take an i-Pad on the tour, which gave access to videos on the displays, further reading, even related music! They also offered free coffee (etc) to encourage you to linger a while. Whilst the art itself wasn't necessarily that which I would go out of the way to see again, the overall experience was very impressive.

I then drove slightly further out to Forest Park, which is a large inner-city park (and when I say large it makes the down in Bristol seem small). In here was the St Louis Art Museum which, whilst undertaking a major development at the moment, still had some interesting pieces including particularly some early 20th century furniture.

Final stop was the citygarden - a sculpture park near the old courthouse and my hotel which had some interesting pieces. The fountains in the garden were pink (see below) relating to a big race raising money for breast cancer which had taken place earlier in the day. One thing very noticeable about both here and the Forest Park earlier were the number of people having their wedding photos taken there - obviously a popular day to get married!