Springfield's Lincoln Library and Museum

SO on the way hoe I decided we should see the Lincoln Museum. Bloggers in the know all agreed that it was not to be missed.

Here's the Springfield depot, we went to buy tickets here.

It's a well preserved building with a model of Lincolns funeral train inside.

 SO on to the museum. It really was very cool. I posed with the Lincoln family! I may have been a little under dressed!!

 The museum is a walk through set up. You start at the log cabin and follow the path to the white house. It has a ton of exhibits, movies, stories to listen too and paintings. This picture of Mary Lincolns dress was a lucky shot-you're not supposed to take photos inside the galleries or of the exhibits, but I kinda forgot and snapped this one before they told me not to.

SO there just aren't any photos of the rest, but it was worth the stop. I'd go again!

Fitz's Root Beer

We went to Fitz's to check out the root beer and have a bite to eat.

It's located in The Loop Neighborhood of St Louis. The Loop is pretty college student oriented. Lots of folks walking around and lots of restaurants and shops. There are folks playing music on e very corner. Some of them are good, some well, not so much.

Fitz's make their root beer ans other flavors of soda right there, and you can watch them bottle from the dining room. The dining room is all rustic brick and you can watch them cook behind the counter.

I had a tasty patty melt with onion rings and root beer-which is bottomless-they'll bring you a new mug of whatever flavor you like.

Hubs had a bowl of gumbo with Fries.

The food was good-nothing outstanding but good, and the root beer was excellent. The creme soda was good too.

It's fun to watch the bottling equipment working as you eat. they tell the story that they found the bottling line in a barn in Wisconsin, and brought it down to St Louis. It is unique and dates from the 1930s. Fitz's was a fun stop and we brought home a case of soda too!

The Great Food Hunt

So it seems like whenever we go on vacation, hubs wants to find a specific grocery item. So we go to various grocery stores to find it.

This is the Whole Foods Store in Brentwood-just a little ways, sort of...from St Louis. We are hunting for a beef tri tip and linguisa sausage. Whole Foods is a lovely store. All organic and whole.
They don't have any tri tip  on hand but will get some tomorrow. They don't carry linguisa, but "you should pop over to the Global Foods Store". so off we go.

Global foods is, yes, you guessed it-global. check out this food.

It was pretty amazing, but they were OUT of linguisa sausage. They wouldn't get it in again for a week. Awwww, so sad. but we should check at Schnucks for the tri tip.

So off we go to Schnucks, yes Knuck's at Schnucks. Schnucks is like Safeway or HyVee. Pretty basic everyday kind of place. We bought Goldfish crackers for $1 a package. It was a good deal. But they didn't have tri tip.
So on Saturday morning as we are getting ready to head home, we make the side trip back out to Whole Foods-

And we ate tri tip on Sunday at home.

The Budweiser Tour

So one thing we found out right away was that if you want beer likely it will be a Budweiser product. They are very proud and supportive of their local brewery.

 We took the tour-It was FREE! And it was a very interesting tour.

at the welcome center there is all kinds of memorabilia. The tour guides lead the group along some lovely gardens in areas where the original home of the Anheiser  and  Busch families resided.

All the buildings a lovely red brick with stone ornaments all over the place. Inside there are lovely tiles like these with Bevo-the fox-it was the symbol for a non alcoholic beverage the brewery produced during prohibition.

This is a view of the mixing area.

 The Clydesdale barn was awesome-chandeliers and horses.

 These are the huge tanks where the beer is beechwood aged.

 The entire grounds is just really pretty. Lots of eagles and ornaments.

This is a view of one packing line from an observation balcony.

 Everywhere you look is stone work and polished brass.

This is the trolly that brings us back to the welcome center where you get two free Anheiser Bush products.We  had very nice tour guides-college students on summer break. The very funniest thing was when the handicapped folks get to ride the elevator to see some areas, well the elevators play the "Here Comes the King" song when it is not during tour hours, but for some reason when we got on and the doors closed the song played-the tourguide laughed and said well you must be special because it never does that during tour times!

St Louis Food and Fun

SO on Thursday after we checked in, saw the arch and got drenched in the rain, we decided to go out to eat somewhere local. We had seen the ad for Pappy's Smokehouse and the bloggers had given it good reviews so we thought we'd give it a try.
Pappy's is not a fancy schmancy place. Picnic tables, cement floor and the walls are papered with autographed menus from celebrities and tributes to St Louis more famous residents. You form a line and the menu is passed back down the line, when you get to the front, you order & pay and tell them your name, then when your order is ready the server comes out of the kitchen and hollers your name! Fun!

I had the pulled pork sandwich with deep fried corn on the cob and baked beans. and Hubs had the beef brisket minus bun with cole slaw & potato salad. It was pretty tasty. There are 3 sauces to choose from at your table and they were all good. Pappy's was also the best value. We paid only $21 for both meals including beverages.

We were plenty filled up and we had to get moving because we had ticket for the riverboat blues cruise down at the arch. I didn't even take a photo of our boat-The Becky Thatcher, what was I thinking?!

Anyways the Soulard Blues Band played for us and the packed boat. It was very fun.

Outside on the deck I got a shot of the arch on the way back to the dock.

The group of girls that was at our row of tables took this picture of Hubs and me.

Doesn't the arch look pretty at night?

 Our new pals clowning around on the boat.

 OK so I don't know any of these folks, but I just loved the man in the pantsuit. See him, kind of behind the girl in white capri pants? Yeah-it was too much!!! He was definitely a dancin' machine!

And this lady also was at our table-she was very mmmm artsy?, noooo, mmmm, stylish?...maybe....mmmm Annie Hall-ish-Yup! We had a good time and it was fun to go on the boat. Turns out it really was also a locals kind of thing to do too, so we chatted with a lot of local folks there.