Meet Me In St.Louis, Louis

Am back from St. Louis business trip! It was fun, but I'm so glad to be home.

The conference was held at the Union Station/Hyatt... it was a really amazing beautiful refurbished train station.

With a really, really bad selection of stores. And terrible fashion.

So terrible, in fact, that we felt the need to document it. (Here's Shea.)

However, the interior of the actual station and hotel made up for it. Really, really beautiful.

I love it when glass tiles like these are lit from below.

Not much to say about the conference except that it was actually pretty useful and interesting. We had lots of bad food (and one really good food experience at the St. Louis Bread Co., their chicken caesar salad was pretty amazing, and their bread was fantastic!). Comfy hotel, in which I could not sleep for some reason. It was very cold and I had forgotten a raincoat (or any coat) so we tried to find something for me to wear (I need a raincoat anyway). Could not find anything even remotely suitable, anywhere. But we did get a nice tour of the outskirts of St. Louis as we went mall-hopping.

I did kind of fall in love with the Arch. The architect was Eero Saarinen (love the Finland connection!) and it really is something to see. It's so huge! It's set in this lovely park by the Mississippi, just off downtown.

Saw some adorable little birds in the park. A Mr. Robin Redbreast for spring...

... a striking redwing blackbird, making his distinctive call as I tried to take his portrait.

It was absolutely freezing when I was taking these photos so I only stayed a few minutes, but I would have liked to have taken the whole tour and gone up into the arch to see the view from the top. It really was something to see and I'm glad I got to experience it.

And now, back home safe and sound.