St. Louis Blues...

Grand old Union Station, now converted to a hotel and shopping mall.

St. Louis MO is a big and important city on this journey! It is where both the Illinois and Missouri Rivers join the Mississippi. Historically, it is a crossroads of continental trade as a major river port and later one of the largest railway hubs. We learned that Europeans first started here at the end of the 17th Century after the French ignored Native American ownership and claimed the land. The settlement was named Saint Louis by Pierre Leclede after the French King. In 1803, France sold much of the midwest to the United States, the Louisiana Purchase, St. Louis with it, and the city then became the base for American expansion west. The magnificent, underground Museum of Westward Expansion is here, underneath the iconic Gateway Arch.

Statue at Laclede's landing place, together with down and out residents enjoying the welcome sunshine.

Covered wagon, iconic image of America's push west of the Mississippi, in the Westward Expansion Museum.

St. Louis' "Old Courthouse" where significant decisions were made on civil rights.

St. Louis looks to be a proud city sadly in decline. The population has been reducing since the 1950's and it shows. The route we happened to take into the city was through poor, negelected and, in some cases, abandoned areas. To make it worse, St. Louis was totally unprepared for the polar vortex despite plenty of warning. It doesn't snow that much in this city, and the heavy storms of the past week firstly shut it down, then left it floundering in a mess of mostly uncleared roads and totally uncleared sidewalks. They are calling it "road slops". As we drove in, the local radio was full of how the city has stuffed up and what they should do about it. And later, with temperatures risen to about 0C, it turned into a slushy mess, reminiscent of Perisher Valley! We felt distressed but quite at home in this icy and muddy mess. However, conditions were so bad on our first full day in St. Louis what with steady rain and impassible footpaths that we retreated to the Plaza Frontenac shopping mall and went to see Inside Llewyn Davis, the lastest Coen Bros movie, not their finest effort. The shopping centre itself was unlike any other we have seen in the USA, what with only upmarket stores and cafes, and no fast food outlets. We found out later that there was a big RV show on in town - if we had known, we may have spent that wet day at the show which was bound to be a relevation to us Aussies.

The next day could not have been more different. In the morning, clouds cleared to reveal perfectly blue skies. Much of the "sidewalk slops" were still there, but at least we could now explore the city. The main streets are Market and Washington - we walked them both.

It was Saturday admittedly, but Market Street was very quiet - no pedestrians and few cars. Numerous grand buildings line the street. One is the grand old Union Station, formally a massive railway passenger terminal, now tastefully renovated and rebirthed to a Hilton hotel and shopping mall. The shops seem to be struggling, but it is winter, definitely not tourist season in St. Louis. The current Amtrak station has been exiled to a block or two back from its fabulous old terminal. Another fine building is the "Old Courthouse", now a very interesting museum, focused on slavery, civil rights and their related significant court cases, one of which was the trigger for the Civil War. (Missouri was a slave state, made interesting because Illinois, across the river, was a free state.)

The winter sun flares from behind the Gateway Arch, with the Interstate 64 bridge crossing the Mississippi River.

The Gateway Arch at the eastern end of Market Street, conceived in 1933, designed in 1951 and completed in 1965 (a saga rather like the Sydney Opera House), is downright astonishing and awe-inspiring. It is the indisputed symbol of the city. From the CBD, you can't appreciate how big it is (it is, according to Wikipedia, the largest arch in the world). When close to it, and underneath it, it is staggeringly large and beautiful, clad in stainless steel and reaching high into the sky.

This far south, and as the weather warms, the frozen river itself is starting to break up. We saw some barge tugs runing their engines if not actually going anywhere, and crossing the Eads Bridge in St. Louis on our first day here, muddy water was appearing between sheets of ice. By the next day, this ice seems to have mostly disappeared, and the Mississippi now looks like a regular river, even blue!

Cobblestone paving provides great character to the Landings bar and restaurant area by the river.

Thanks to roadworks preventing our intended walking route, we stumbled into the Landings area of town. At last some life! Here there be bars and nightclubs, and we had a sandwich and a drink at one of them. Cobblestone streets too, to add to the area's ambience. An emergency visit by the St. Louis Fire Department added to the fun.

Enjoying a mid-afternoon cleansing ale at Hannigans Bar in the Landings.

Detail of the Eads Bridge reveals its age, texture and structure. Metro trains run on the level below the road deck.

Classical steel structure of the Martin Luther King Memorial Bridge.

The walk uptown back to our hotel was up Washington Street. Still pretty quiet, but more people and traffic than Market Street. More grand buildings here, but this time they are old warehouses converted to apartments and hotels. At street level, there are good numbers of restaurants and bars, bowling alleys. Even the occasional store, but this downtown seems to be devoid of the shops and department stores which define other cities. They must be out in the suburbs?

Inside this 8 lane bowling alley we found a wedding reception going on.