Today, we visited the Arch. School's starting next week and Mike's leaving Monday morning... and I felt that we should enjoy ourselves. While staying at home is enjoyable, we tend to feel sluggish after a while. So we decided to do the touristy thing.
The Arch is actually a rather nice place to visit. The area around the arch is a pleasantly wooded park, flanked by the Mississippi on one side and a oddly green pond on the other.
At the base of the Arch, there's a subterranean level of museums, shops and theaters. Wonderfully cool after the summer heat outside.
The fun, if cliche thing to do, is to take a tram ride to the top of the Arch. Though the actual ride to the top takes only 4 mins (the ride down takes 3 mins), including the gawking time at the top and the queuing time (especially the queuing time!), it takes about an hour. The picture below shows the capsule that is the 'tram'; it seats 5 and is not for the claustrophobic. Even for me, I had to stoop to get in and keep my head bowed slightly when seated.
As we went up, I remembered how a woman we met on the flight from Chicago to St Louis was telling us cheerfully about how the tram broke down a few weeks back.
Views of, St Louis city from the top of the Arch, and Illinois across the Mississippi, respectively.
To be frank, the views are rather insipid. The city isn't as bustling as some other urban areas and the view of Illinois is rather bland. The viewing windows are tiny and double-plated, so you don't get a panoramic view, and there are no cool features like (Toronto's) CN Tower's glass floor. That said, I still had a lot of fun. The ride up was certainly novel and there were plenty of other things to do as well; for $14, we got a ride to the top and a wide-screen (otherwise known as IMAX) film about Alaska. The museum exhibits were free ('Museum of Westward Expansions') and nicely done. I enjoyed it.
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