When In Rome

“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis!

Meet me at the fair!

Why the fuck would anyone go to St. Louis?

What the fuck is even there?”

Well. I’m going to tell you.

Prologue:

We could have gone anywhere. After all the beaches and passport stamps and escapes from the fickle Colorado weather to paradise, Missouri seemed an odd choice for a November getaway.

We had brainstormed, spitballed for a while. TMK would eventually tell people he wanted to go to Miami, but I picked STL, I assume to save face when people looked disappointed and skeptical. But the fact is, it came down to Facebook post. You know, the ones that have a list of activities or places and you’re supposed to count the ones you’ve done? And it came up: “Have you ever been to the Gateway Arch?” And neither of us had. He had been floating the idea of Boston, which seems beautiful but he’s been there, and the point was to find somewhere new to both of us, and not TOO cold. Turns out St. Louis is a 2 hour, 2 minute flight from Denver and why the hell not? Let’s explore an unlikely spot before we head back the beaches of Mexico for New Year’s.

Let’s be clear – I didn’t know shit about St. Louis. I missed that day in History class, and the current news coming out of there isn’t flattering. TMK, the one with the history degree, was all, “Lewis and Clark!” and, “It’s the most dangerous city in the country! Really, look. I googled it.” Well, that sounds perfectly adventurous then! And the hunt for a hotel began.

He and I can have…different standards, when it comes to lodging. I err on the side of luxury when it’s the two of us. A couple of years ago, when we started talking about a two week trip to Italy (still yet to happen – stay tuned! – 2025 is our year!) I was like, “Do we NEED to stay in the nicest places?” Meanwhile, I was on a road trip with Willow, staying in a roadside motel in Idaho Springs with an old metal room key and actual bugs in my bed and I thought, “an Italian villa sounds nice…” I’m used to operating on a tight budget, and a seedy adventure is better than none at all.

But his way is okay too, I guess. I like hotel slippers and good room coffee now. That’s pretty cool. So in keeping with the run of fantastic stays we’d already had in 2024, which included a Ritz-Carlton in Aruba and a Francis Ford Coppola property in Belize, I booked the nicest hotel I could find in St. Louis: Four Seasons with an Arch view. If the Arch is all there is to see in St. Louis, we might as well look at it every day from a nice room, right?

22 November 2024

This was our first trip with just the two of us since we had quit drinking a few months earlier and it would be interesting to see how that changes our habits and rituals when it comes to traveling. The truth is, not much, except now we remember it. We still sidled up to the bar in Denver International Airport, ordered a couple of “near beers” (Heineken 0.0) and discussed our upcoming trip, just as we’d always done with our whiskey. A few short hours later, we were in the Uber on our way to the Four Seasons.

I started to feel that rush of energy of being in a new city, a big city, so different from Colorado Springs. The steam from manhole covers is always something I associate with that, the sonder that accompanies the sight of still lighted windows in tall buildings (wait, where are the tall buildings?) and keeping an eye out for street art. Sadly, a sloppy “Lick My Ballz” scrawled in blue spray paint was all I saw.

After check in and getting our stuff to our room and checking out the view, it was getting close to 10pm and snacks were in order, so we headed down to the bar/restaurant, Ramsay’s Kitchen. As in The Gordon Ramsay. I have mixed feelings about celebrity chefs and the way they branch off like this. Are you actually getting their standard of service and quality? Are they just stamping their name on something for the money? Is it more of a chain at this point? Does it really matter when it’s late and you’ve been traveling and you’re hungry?

Luckily, they were still serving full menu and they had a couple mocktails to try, so we started in by sharing a few sides: roasted romanesco, potato purée, and a jumbo lump crab cake. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a crab cake that will live up to the Carousel Bar in New Orleans - it ruined other crab cakes for me - but this one was pretty damn good. Still hungry, we ordered a piece of cheesecake and, at the suggestion of our bartender, the dessert that is the RK pride and joy, the butter toffee bread pudding. Holy shit. I’m not (or wasn’t) really a dessert person but that bread pudding melted in my mouth and gave me life. I’ve never had anything like it and we both left a path of drool back to the elevator and upstairs to get some sleep.

Saturday, November 23:

TMK is still sleeping.

We had originally booked our Arch tour for this day, but because TMK lives and breathes University of Michigan football, we rescheduled, and I did some research to find a sports bar nearby and have a chill day. I had actually researched before even getting to St. Louis. Of course I checked maps for bars near the hotel, found one close by with impressive looking pictures full of people, talk about event space and shuttle service to sporting events. I even called and asked what their Saturday crowd is like: Do we need to get there early for football? etc, and she said, “sometimes it’s busy, sometimes it’s not, but we have like 52 TVs so I’m sure we can get your game on.”

Perfect.

In the hotel room, I had an espresso. A Nespresso. A Nespresso espresso. A little shot of buzz. He was still sleeping. I took a shower and put on my Four Seasons robe (love a robe! I’m actually wearing one from…somewhere[?] as I write this) when the doorbell (yes, doorbell) rang. I answered the door to housekeeping, quickly said “later”, and put the DND sign on the door. TMK still sleeping. Had another shot of espresso and got dressed.

I’d just recently begun the habit of completely unpacking and putting my clothes away when I get to a hotel or Airbnb, or whatever the case may be. As my friend Hannah put it, “this is my home for the next ___ days”, and that makes sense. I also have gotten better about packing just an outfit a day and trying to stick to that. Pack right, dress right. I’d checked the weather and all of our activities, and I was sure I’d made the correct choices. I put on a t-shirt under a Colorado hoodie, the blue one with the flag logo “C”, (which I most certainly bought at a Walgreen’s or a gas station or the airport when the weather turned unexpectedly cold back home, a situation which has led to a small collection of generic Colorado hoodies), jeans, and Chucks. After all, we were just going to be posted up watching football, no need to worry about being too cold, or walking in the most comfortable shoes, right? TMK was STILL sleeping and I was bored. Time to explore and find a real cup of coffee. So I turned the TV on to Big Noon Saturday (college football pregame show), grabbed my room key (made out of wood – LOVE that too) and was out the door.

Our room had a nice, big, deep bathtub that was just begging to be used. I’ve always been a bath person, and TMK is a recent convert. Funny how men will take the bath with you just because it’s naked time, but they end up loving it for all the other reasons, too. If you were to ask him, he would say it’s just the naked time part, but I know that’s bullshit. [In fact, I did tell him about this part of my story and he said, “It’s just the naked time,” and I said, “I know that’s bullshit, and I was going to write that you would say that but I decided not to, but now I’m going to go add it.” So, I just did.

Also, it’s proven that it’s easier and healthier to talk about things that are bothering us if we are touching physically. It’s science. It’s harder to get mad if the person delivering the issue is holding your hand or rubbing your shoulders, for instance, So what better place than a bathtub, where everyone is feeling exposed, yet connected? Not that the bath is always a battlefield - the words “let’s take a bath” are not synonymous with “we need to talk”. It just provides a more serene environment to listen and discuss. But most of the time it’s just soaking by candlelight and letting our days dissolve like the Dead Sea bath salts fizzing around our nethers.

I approached the elevator with the mission (besides coffee) to find a candle for the bath in the room. I hadn’t seen much of the hotel last night and there had to be some kind of shop on the main floor for provisions. This is one of those hotels that has two elevators: one for the first few floors (1-8, in this case), so non-guests can enjoy the restaurants and casino, and one for guest rooms. We were staying on the 11 th floor, so I rode down to 8.