Day 4 Route 66 - Saint Louis 36.3 miles

---

We had a late night/early morning after Bernie watched the Richmond vs Fremantle game via the internet!! Unfortunately Richmond's winning streak was ended by the Dockers!

After sleeping in a bit we ventured down to the lower lobby for our complimentary breakfast at the Hampton Inn. There was plenty of food to choose from, but we kept it simple opting for some fruit and a bit of cereal.

After breakfast we took the car out of the Hampton's car park and headed off to Schiller's Camera Store. This time Bernie had called ahead to be certain that the lens was in stock before we drove right across town!! As we were driving to the store we found that we were actually travelling on one of the many roads designated as Historic Route 66. The Mother Road was routed and re-routed many times in Saint Louis to the extent that there are literally dozens of versions of Route 66 in and around the city.

Edna got us to the camera store very efficiently where Bernie tried out a 70-300mm lens and a 100-400mm lens. He eventually opted for the 70-300mm lens because it was a better fit in his camera bag. He would have liked the 100-400mm, but it was heavier and longer and not as well-suited to being lugged around the world in a camera bag/backpack.

With that decision made, Bernie handed over two lenses to be valued as trade-ins. The guy went out the back for a while and came back with a price that Bernie was pretty happy with. Then the fun started. The store implemented its new computer system on Monday and, despite two years in development, it was having some teething problems!! We had three staff members all trying to work out where the trade-in value should be entered.

They couldn't work it out between them so had to get the IT guy from out the back to help. After working on it for a while at the counter the IT guy decided that there was a bit of a glitch and he would have to work it out, out the back!!?? Eventually the manager (owner?) came back to say that the whole transaction had been voided, but he didn't want to keep us any longer so we could take the lens and they would re-enter the transaction and email the transaction record to us when the IT guy sorted out the programming. Hmmn, better check the credit card account in a day or two to make sure we don't end up being charged twice???

This computer glitch effectively cost us the whole morning because it was lunchtime by the time we drove back downtown. As we drove back into the city centre we realised that we needed to photograph the Old Courthouse from about 11th Street because this perspective solved the problem with all of the ugly scaffolding!! We grabbed a quick lunch at TGI Friday - where our server was really working it for a big tip - and then walked through the City Gardens that extend westwards from Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse to take some more photos. This green swathe through the city is really pretty.

Next we walked to the casino to catch the seventy-five minute/21 mile Trolley tour for an overview of Saint Louis. The tour was really comprehensive, but made us realise that one day in Saint Louis is nowhere near enough time to do it justice!! Unfortunately the tour wasn't much good for photography with only one stop at the Art Museum in Forest Park.

At our stop in Forest Park we saw a guy flying a kite on a really, really long line. I have a vivid childhood memory of flying a huge box kite that my father made on about a thousand metres of line so I had to ask the guy if he knew how far away his kite was. He told me that the tails on the line were spaced at 100 yard intervals so we counted up eight tails and then estimated that there was another 200 yards of line from the last tail. He even let me hold the kite for a moment and it was really tugging at its string! Unfortunately I had to hand the kite back pretty quickly because the trolley driver started honking the horn to round up his passengers.

By the time we finished our tour of Saint Louis it was about 92°F so we walked back to the hotel and went for a swim in the Hampton Inn's pool. We saw some bikers in the lift who had just finished their Route 66 leg for the day. They looked really hot and bothered! Back in our room we spent a bit of time working out our itinerary for Sunday. With some accommodation booked for Sunday night we took the car out again, this time to go to see the Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. The 'lanterns' were gigantic figures crafted from steel frames and silk by Chinese artisans in a display rarely seen outside of China. The festivals catchphrase 'Art by day, magic by night' pretty much sums up the experience. I think it was better than the fireworks on Friday night!

It was such a beautiful fine and mild evening that we stayed at the Botanical Gardens until they closed at 10.00pm and then drove back into the city with the top down!

---