Weekend with the Phantom

Last weekend was dubbed #phantomweekend by my friend Forsh and I, as I made the trek to St. Louis to see her and she treated me to one of the things I’ve always wanted to do: see Phantom of the Opera on stage. It’s currently touring the US, and I didn’t think I was going to get to see it, but she made it happen.

The weekend started on Friday morning with the drive to St. Louis. It had been a really long time since I’d made a substantial drive by myself, but I didn’t mind it. I had some podcasts downloaded, so I stayed entertained the whole way. FYI, Podcast Addict on Android has become one of my favorite apps.

I rolled in early in the afternoon and chilled for a bit with Forsh and Little Forsh. When Mr. Forsh got home, we went to one of the local restaurants, a pizza place called Deweys. The wait was a bit longish, but we drank beer and luckily I wasn’t having many pain issues, so it was all good. The pizza was great. I kept it simple since I’m picky and had their meatball pizza and a salad that completely rocked my world.

After dinner, we rolled back to their house and Forsh and I commenced watching the Phantom of the Opera movie, the one with Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. I did some knitting, though most of that knitting was spent fighting with some cabling, which I’ll talk about more in another blog post.

Saturday morning was another relaxing one while we waited for the babysitter to get there. The site had warned play goers to get there early, so we made sure we had plenty of time to find it, get parking, and find our seats. Things couldn’t have worked out better. The drive wasn’t long, and even though we sat in long lines of traffic downtown, we still found parking and got into the theater with about a half hour until showtime.

The Fabulous Fox Theatre is huge and gorgeous and the lighting was amazing and the seating was comfortable. We found the bathroom, which was this whole lounge area, then found our seats and settled in. I’ve mentioned my love of theater before, but the anticipation for this one kind of had me emotional, and when the play actually started (with that opening piece of Phantom that always does good things for me) I may have shed a few tears of happiness.

The view when you walk into the Fox theater. So awesome!

As expected, the show was wonderful and I enjoyed it thoroughly. At intermission, I went and bought one of their specialty drinks (appropriately named The Phantom), so I even got my drink on. The music was good, the actors were good, and the things they did with set and stage design blew my mind. The only thing I wasn’t expecting was the difference in how the guy playing Phantom sang his parts compared to every other version I’ve seen or heard: less angry, more manic. It was still good, though.

After the show, we had dinner at Sweetie Pie’s. I’m kind of out of the loop on anything having to do with the Food Network or endorsed by celebrities, so I hadn’t actually heard about this gem, but Forsh had and was super excited about trying it out.

Sweetie Pies is a home cooking, cafeteria style type restaurant with cozy booths and friendly staff. I was feeling a little adventurous, so I tried the ribs. They were so good! The corn was also fantastic. Pretty much everything was delicious and the portions were huge, so much so that in not planning to take any with me, I ate too much and then was in a great deal of discomfort at our next stop, which was Trader Joe’s. Still worth it.

We finished the evening with Tangled and knitting and then I decided to start my second reading of Unmasqued since I was already in the Phantom zone. After a quick smoothie breakfast with Forsh the next morning, I headed home, finishing off some podcasts and feeling very happy, if not a little sad that the weekend had to end.

The weekend was awesome and I owe Forsh big time for helping me check something off my bucket list.

A.

Day 4: St. Louis Vacation – Art and The Loop

We were up early, ready to tackle our itinerary, but the day ended up being quite a bit different than planned, which ended up being mostly a good thing.

Our first stop was unplanned until this morning when I did a Google search of things we could do while we waited for the museums to open. In my searching, I found Bellefontaine Cemetery. Though they offer tours, we just drove through it and looked at the pretty structures and scenery. It was huge, and we got a little bit lost in there, but we managed to find our way out after finding a geocache that had been hidden at one of the trees on the property.

Once we were done there, we headed towards St. Louis Art Museum near the zoo. We weren’t prepared for how huge it was.

The view from outside the museum.

After we’d only covered about two big sections, I started feeling hungry, which was kind of a bummer since I’d made sure to eat a big breakfast to fuel up. It was making me tired and cranky, and even though they had a cafe on site, I wasn’t feeling the menu or the prices. We ended up leaving to go find some food, figuring if we felt up to it, we’d go back. It didn’t happen that way. We didn’t finish out the art museum, nor did we go back to the zoo as planned, so I was a little bit unhappy about that.

As a side note, we found a cache near the museum, and Jon was able to drop his zombie travel bug off. Now his is in the wild. I’m hoping I can find a good place to drop mine off tomorrow.

Even though I was a little bummed about leaving the museum, the detour made for a good time because we found The Loop, a cool artsy area that had been recommended to me. Our first stop was for food, and we ate at a small bar called the Market Pub House.  They made an awesome burger, and the re-fuel gave us the energy to do some more walking.

We walked down the street and browsed the shops and art along the way. We made two stops, one at a game store and one at Ben & Jerry’s. I’ve never actually eaten at a Ben & Jerry’s shop, but it’s one of my fave ice creams. I opted for a small bowl of half peanut butter and banana frozen greek yogurt and half chocolate peanut butter swirl. So good!

We picked up a geocache in the area and then headed back to the hotel for some rest time.  My legs are a little sore tonight from all the walking, but I’m kind of loving the feeling. The fact that I can now do all this walking is reminding me that staying in motion and getting daily exercise has been completely worth it.

Tomorrow is our geocache day! We have our route mapped out and will be getting up super early to head to Peoria, grabbing some geocaches along the way and attempting to find a tough one that only one other person has ever found. We’d love to be the second to find on this, but I think it’ll be fun just to add our name to the list of people who couldn’t.  Hoping to find some cool scenery and places to visit along the way as well.

A.

Day 2: St. Louis Vacation – Science and Beer

We were up early to take advantage of the hotel’s breakfast. While I knew there would be hot food on the buffet, I was thinking it was just going to be biscuits and gravy, but there were eggs and sausage too. There was also fruit, bagels, juice, cereal, and danishes. I made sure to eat a full breakfast since I knew we were going to be doing a lot of walking.

We made it to the St. Louis Science Center shortly after they opened and walked around for a couple hours. There were some great displays, including an energy contraption that stretched along the whole ceiling of the entrance lobby. Colored balls followed the loops from one side to the other.

As cool as this was, my favorite was the animatronic dinosaurs.

There were a lot of kids there and a lot of cool things geared towards kids, but we still had fun walking through the museum and looking at things. We wandered over the planetarium to look around as well, but we didn’t do any of the shows. It was a good visit though, and gave us another chance to use our ASTC membership that we got through the Flint Hills Discovery Center.

Our second stop of the day was at the Anheuser-Busch Tour Center for a tour of the St. Louis brewery.

The tour was a lot of fun. It was a seven block walking tour, all down hill, though we did have to navigate down three flights of stairs. This gave me a little anxiety since my knees do better with going up stairs than they do down, but I managed with hardly any problems. We got to see the areas where they brew, age, and package the beer. We also got to see some of the Budweiser clydesdales.

 

At the end of the tour, we took trolleys back up the hill to the hospitality room where we were given two free samples. I tried the Black Crown beer and the Straw-ber-ita flavored drink (is that even considered a beer?). Both were good, though the fruity drink was more pleasing to my taste buds. The drinks made me a little giggly, so we hung out for awhile, just to make sure I could drive safely.

We came back to the hotel and made a pit stop at the Hardee’s down the street for a late lunch. Their credit card system wasn’t working, but instead of turning us away, they gave us a free meal. It was tasty too. Our last couple Hardee’s experiences weren’t great, so it was nice to finally have a good charbroil flavored burger.

Though we talked about doing something else this afternoon and evening, we ended up just relaxing in the hotel room and ordering in. We have a lot of walking planned for the next couple of days and wanted to pace ourselves so as not to burn out all in the first day. It was good to just chill.

Tomorrow is zoo day! I hope the weather doesn’t freeze us out from visiting the animals.

A.

Gen Con 2013 Day 4: So Long and Thanks for All the Fun

This marked the first year we attended Gen Con on Sunday. We’re usually so tired by Day 3 that we just go home after hotel checkout. This year, though, we came back to buy the games we’d decided on from the day before.  We also talked to the convention manager at AEG,  and we might be helping out with a con in KC in November. I’m kind of excited about that.

We got on the road a little after 11 and had a nice drive. As we neared St. Louis, we decided to drive right through the city so Terry could see the arch. It was so close that we threw caution to the wind and decided just to go visit it. I love impromptu trip stops!  The arch was cool…definitely bigger in person.  The only one of us who’d visited there was Erica, so it was a cool treat.

It was a little bit of a walk, but it was a nice stretch. I hadn’t realized there was a museum underneath the arch either.

I debated going to the top in the tram, but decided against it due to time constraints. That, and the fact that the trams are tiny, and I wasn’t sure if I was mentally prepared for the claustrophobia or the height. However, I think Jon and I are going to go up when we visit St. Louis in November.  That’s the plan, though I think we’re both a little apprehensive about that.

The rest of the drive was uneventful other than a few stops and some good conversation. Our trip mates were fabulous to road trip with and the drive didn’t feel too long at all. We crashed shortly after getting home, happy with our experiences and just a little sad that they were over.

A.