Checking off two bucket list cities

We have been trying to get in as much traveling this summer as we can.  We have an amazing staff right now and it's allowing us to have it a little easier than usual.  Unfortunately, we are going to lose a lot of them when school starts again and we won't have the freedom that we are now enjoying.

The first plan was to take a road trip and visit 3 Presidential Libraries and hit about 6 states.  But then we realized that goal was too lofty and we needed to change it.  Our biggest problem is that Houston is so far down south that it takes a day to get anywhere (unless you head east).

So we checked our available airline award miles and found out that we had enough miles to get 2 free tickets.  We chose St. Louis and then we were going to do a road trip from there and hit Nashville and Memphis.  St. Louis and Nashville have been cities we've wanted to visit for awhile, so it seemed like now was a good time.  The plan was to have no plan.  We'd drive and stop where we wanted and we'd book hotels along the way.  It was going to be relaxing, restful, and fun.

We flew into St. Louis and arrived at 11am.  Since we couldn't check into our hotel until 2, we decided to eat some lunch and visit the World Chess Hall of Fame.  How lucky could we be.....a chess museum (not!).

The area of town where the museum and we ate lunch was actually a nice little area and it was a nice bright sunny hot day in St. Louis. 

 The world's largest chess piece

 The actual restroom signs at the World Chess Hall of Fame

 A big chess piece with a big chess fan

 Didn't take us too long to go through this place and lucky for us the price was right.....FREE!

 

We had tour reservations scheduled in an hour, so the plan was to head to the hotel, check in, and rest up a little.  The plan was not to get lost trying to find the hotel, but we did.  Took us a little longer to find the hotel than what we wanted....but it was a great casino hotel right on the banks of the Mississippi River AND right across from the Arch.

 

Quite possibly one of the best views we've ever had from a hotel window.  Although the strip view in Las Vegas and downtown view were pretty amazing too.

The other direction

 

We had reservations for the Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour and since we had gotten lost getting to the hotel, we basically dropped off our bags and left.

 

We headed toward the Brewery and caught this awesome sight!

We had decided that our brewery tour was not going to be the free one they offered, but we upgraded to the Brew Master's Tour, which was a little longer and you got some cool souvenirs.

The first stop on our tour was the Brew Master's room where they opened up a double door refrigerator for the 11 of us and told us to help ourselves.  So we sat and chatted and drank a couple of beers and then we began our tour.

 It was a huge amazingly old complex and extremely interesting.  Didn't hurt that we got to sample beer along the way.

 We learned each step of the brewing process.  The whole time we were there you could smell the hops or barley in the air as you wandered around.

 Protective eyewear and hats were required

 Who knew they brewed so many different beers?

One of the most fun places was the bottling plant.  They were bottling Bud Light the time we were in there and we watched bottles get filled, boxed, and labeled.

 We also got to go inside the barn (should call it a palace) where they kept 9 Clydesdales. 

 We were fortunate enough to be in there while they were removing the ribbons off one of the horses.

Another fun part of the trip was going into the cooling room (47 degrees) where they had huge tanks filled with beer chilling.  We got to tap one of the tanks and fill up our glasses a couple of times enjoying the freshest beer we'll ever have.

 After the tour was over, we headed back over to the Brew Master's room and once again got to sample what was inside that refrigerator.  I knew we weren't going to be having any more beer that evening.  We got to keep the testing glasses that we used and we stopped in the gift shop and picked up a couple of souvenir glasses for friends and family and a couple of Stella glasses for ourselves.

We headed back to the hotel and laid down for a short nap.  We had gotten up at 4:30 that morning and already had a long day of traveling and sightseeing.  Woke up from the nap and opened the curtains and this is what I saw:
 

We walked over to the casino, grabbed something quick to eat, and played adult games for about an hour and a half.  We decided we were tired and wanted to get a fairly early start the next day heading to Nashville.

One last amazing picture out the window of the hotel.....and we hopped in the car and started the road trip part of the adventure.

As you can see, we love our Stella glasses and try to use them frequently.
One thing we learned in our beer tour....always drink your beer in a glass and always get a 2 finger foam on it to release the gasses.  I think I did pretty well with this pour......don't you?