Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Weekend Rewind: St Louis in September, Part II

And on to Saturday....

Saturday morning we woke up to a beautiful day. This was the view from our window...

We headed out pretty early to see the Seminary but not without first caffeinating at Peet's. You know Peet's? The inspiration for Starbucks. Peet's the guy who wanted to stay local, avoid fast food coffee bars and stay in California. Yet they now have a location at a casino in StL.

Any who, after consuming our mocha (C) and croissant (me - which was way better than Starbucks) we headed off to visit the Seminary. What a gorgeous day to visit a gorgeous campus. We paid a visit to the beautiful chapel, walked around the campus, and spent and exorbitant amount of time in the bookstore. Charles spent time perusing the books, I spent time reading him funny Christian greeting cards.



The seminary buts up to the Washington University campus. My mother went to Washington University and lived in the area nannying when she wasn't attending classes. We drove around her old stomping ground of Forest Park and saw the two houses she lived in while nannying. Please note she was not the owner, she was the nanny. I'm pretty sure these houses are much larger than anything in good old Fairfield County.

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Can you guess our next stop? I'm thinking not. As I mentioned here I'm a fan of the Food Network. My newest conquest is to stalk Guy Fieri by visiting restaurants featured on Diner's, Drive-in's, and Dives. And what do you know, there's a place in St. Louis that Guy visited. C and I had seen the Iron Barley on an episode sometime last summer and knew (or I did) we'd have to visit it when we were out in StL sometime.

Needless to say it wasn't too busy at 11:30 on a Saturday morning, but since it already had Guy's stamp of approval, I could care less how many people where in the Dive. For the first time I ordered one of the three items featured during Guy's visit, the Schnitzel & Spaetzle. Charles went for the special, an opened face BBQ sandwich. Half way through we switched plates so I could work on the potato salad and coleslaw while he tried the pork. Both were delicious. I can now say I've visited three Triple D locations (I even have a menu, or 2, to prove it) and only have roughly 81 more places to visit.


After the Iron Barley we headed back to the hotel for our scheduled pedicure and eyebrow waxing. (For the sake of C I won't mention which one of us got what, but I will say the idea came from my laziness to paint my toe nails prior to the wedding that night.) I made the quick decision to also get my finger nails painted while we were there thinking we had plenty of time prior to the wedding. After all our appointments were at 2:30 and my pedicure, ooops, only lasted 45 minutes. That allowed for getting to the room by 3:15 (I didn't allow "travel" time), changed and out the door by 3:30, and arriving at the wedding at 3:45. Talk about relaxing. I enjoyed all 45+ minutes of my pedicure and the 10 minute quick finger nail painting. Needless to say I wasn't done at 3:15 (try a little after 3:30) and had to have Charles practically dress me so I didn't mess up my freshly painted nails. That left us roughly 25 minutes to get to a church we'd never been to in a town we'd never been to. Thanks to my marvelous navigation we made it to the church by 4:50.

Charles later said I was very relaxed after my hour in the spa. I didn't seem to care much that we'd be late (which we weren't), but in my defense after a pedicure like that and 5 diamond service, you really don't have a care in the world.

As I said, we made it to Charles' cousin's wedding with plenty of time to spare and weren't even the last ones there. The service was very nice and the bride and groom looked gorgeous. At the reception we were able to catch up with Grandpa and Grandma E, as well as other Elseas we don't get to see as much as we'd like. The food was a delicious homemade meal of roast, ham, potatoes, corn, beans, salad, and rolls. I always measure a wedding reception by the quality of the wedding cake and this one was a true winner. I was able to leave a very full and happy camper.

After the reception we headed to Starbucks with Mom E., Dad E., and Amilia. (Going to Starbucks is more than a regular occurrence in the family). As usual we had a lovely chat and stayed until the Starbucks gals and guy were ready to kick us out.

After that we returned to the hotel, I took another bath, then put my very, very tired self to bed.

And that concludes out Saturday. Tomorrow will be the final installment of our Superb St. Louis in September visit and will include a brewery tour, nap, the Old Spaghetti Factory, Cardinals Game, an Arch visit, and a late night burger.

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