Red Truck Road Trip – WEST Coast Team

St. Louis is one of those cities which not only has a lot of history associated with it, but it also embraces its past at every available opportunity. While there is a lot of modern architecture downtown, along with renovations and remodeling jobs around just about every corner, there are a lot of untouched older structures (turn-of-the-century apartment and office buildings, mainly) mixed in with the newer skyscrapers. The further away from The Arch one gets, though, more and more older buildings appear along the streets. It’s probably a good thing we headed away from The Arch: Mike wanted to ride to the top, but I wanted a frappucino.

Walking around St. Louis will eventually bring a pedestrian to a number of different parks, fountains, and public works of art which are peppered all over the city. A lot of the places embrace older, more classical styles of art instead of putting up more modern works… the effect creates an atmosphere that is largely in keeping with the art deco movement from the 1920s and 30s that feels, for lack of a better term, uniform throughout much of the downtown area.

As we walked around, Mike asked some of the locals about what was good to check out and was directed towards Union Station as a point of interest. The building was a passenger train station from the late 1800s until 1978, and it’s now been converted into a quirky shopping mall peppered with cool local stores (thankfully, there’s a lack of the standard franchise shops one typically sees in such places). Mike and I were particularly entertained by The Fudgery, which hand-makes their fudge and then entertains an audience of mall-walkers with a performance straight out of a gospel church. While the store itself is actually a small (but multi-state) chain, its gimmick of singing (beautifully, I might add) for sales makes it highly original and entertaining to visit. Also, their Cookies ‘n’ Cream fudge is apparently delicious, but Mike recommends running at least three miles after eating it.

The other cool thing about Union Station is that there happens to be a quaint little lake outside its main entrance; it comes complete with paddle boat, faux fire-hose nozzles (which can be turned to spray boat paddlers), and an insane crowd of Koi fish which are constantly begging for food. A few more details about that last bit: the Koi have come to realize that people standing at the edge of the docks surrounding the lake are probably going to feed them, so they will literally swarm all over the place as they jockey for a better position to receive the food from your hands. However, they apparently think that cameras will dispense tasty treats, too. Sure, they may be cute, but they’re really not very bright.