Meet me in St. Louis

I'm back from vacation -- a fun-filled road trip with Trea to St. Louis, Chicago and Springfield, Illinois! We spent 10 days on the road. He was lead driver and I was head DJ and navigator extraordinaire. We had so much fun! (And I've had that Judy Garland song in my head for weeks.)

I'm walking without crutches now, but I'm still nowhere close to being able to run. So forgive me while I turn this blog into a travel journal for a few posts. Here are some highlights from St. Louis, with more to come soon on Chicago and Springfield. 

The first thing on our must-see list when we got to St. Louis was a tour of the Anheuser Busch brewery. I don't even like beer, but this was the most fun thing we did while we were there. The grounds were gorgeous, and it was cool learning the history of the business. But the Clydesdales were my favorite! 

They were so pretty, running in the sunshine!

And yes, we're lame and buy the tourist pictures because they're usually the only decent pics we get with both of us in it.

See? Blurriest picture of the trip, thanks to a shaky stranger. And this was before the samples!

Giant barrel o' brew.

Time to taste!

And then it was off to see the arch! Our hotel was right next to it on the river, and we could see it from our window. Unfortunately, we got there too late and didn't get to go to the top, but we browsed the gift shop and walked around the nearby paths on the riverfront. It was a lovely day. 

After one perfect day, the rest of our visit was rainy and cold, so we stayed indoors for the most part. Did LOTS of shopping and checked out a couple of museums. We found some phenomenal Italian food. We celebrated our fourth anniversary while we were there, and for our anniversary dinner, the owner of Dominic's -- Dominic himself -- who is as Italian as they come, surprised us with dessert and serenaded us with a lovely rendition of "Happy Anniversary" sung to the tune of Happy Birthday. It was awesome. 

Next stop, Chicago!