Lichfield to St. Louis
It turns out the Ariston doesn't serve breakfast, and we missed a turn and ended up back on "new" Route 66, the 1940 alignment.
Still, it doesn't matter because we got breakfast at the Route 66 Cafe in Lichfield instead, which was a real traditional American cafe. The special was sausage, two eggs, hash brown and toast. Debbie had bacon instead of eggs. Hash brown turns out not to be the nuggets we buy frozen at home, but a mush of grated potato and grated onion, fried. Very tasty stuff.
On the road again, we got some nice photos of the old, old road, which is not fit for cars, but runs alongside the navigable bits in places:
We also got a nice crop of roadside sights, including the "world's biggest catsup bottle", a bit of a detour from Route 66, in Collinsville IL. We haven't found any catsup on shop shelves yet -- only ketchup -- so we can't compare them.
Aventually we crossed the Mississipi, and the state border into Missouri, and stopped at a tourist information office. We decided to stay the night in St.Louis and asked their advice as to where to stay. They gave us a voucher for a cheap room in another Super 8 motel, which we headed for. The place turns out to be about 20 miles out of town. but we're here anyway.
With the room sorted, we headed into St. Louis itself to see its famous arch. St. Louis was actually originally named "Sgt. Lewis", after Inspector Morse's sidekick. Of course, this was when Inspector Morse was just a series of books, long before the TV series. It was soon contracted to "St. Lewis" to save a letter.
This arch is quite a thing. It's 192m tall, and 192m from leg to leg, and it's full of people. Honestly. Well, not full - but there's a museum (a museum of western advancement, no less) underneath and you can sit in a little train of pods which carry you to the top. It's supposed to be a symbolic "gateway to the west". Here's some views from the top.
We couldn't help noticing from that height, that one of the boats moored on the riverside, rather than being a cruise boat or a casino like the others, had McDonalds logos all over it. At the bottom, we had a closer look. It turned out to be the "World's only floating McDonalds", although I couldn't swear that it wasn't mounted on concrete.
We were very hot, but we wanted to eat properly later, so we decided
to just get drinks. Then I spotted McFlurry with Oreos... so we had one
of those each, and now we're not hungry any more. This means we've had
a fried breakfast and an ice cream all day... Maybe I'm not comig home
fat after all -- just spotty.