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Good morning, adventurers. and welcome to St. Louis. So, the first thing that probably pops into your head when someone says St. Louis is the arch, which of course is pretty dang sweet, but there is so much more to this city. First off, we love all of the classic St. Louis style architecture and the beautiful brick homes dotted throughout the city, but it's also pretty artistic, so keep your eyes out for some really cool sculptures and murals. And there's obviously a huge beer scene in St. Louis, which isn't surprising considering it's home to Annheiser Bush. But there's also a pretty epic food scene with some of the most delicious food that we have ever eaten.
We grew up just a couple hours south of St. Louis. So, we wanted to spend the weekend exploring the city and taking you to some of our favorite spots. But actually, the first spot that we're taking you to is in East St. Louis. We are across the river. This is Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park. And the reason to start your St. Louis journey here is because it gives you an epic view of the downtown area. and most importantly the arch. Yeah. Hopefully this little adventure will convince you to stop by St. Louis and visit our neck of the woods sometimes. But if not, we are more than happy to drink all the beer, eat all the food, and have all the fun on your behalf.
All right, St. Louis, here we come. To start things off, we need coffee. And obviously there are many coffee shops all over St. Louis. Our top ones are coffee stamp. We go there pretty much every day. There's Good Strangers, which just has a really unique vibe. You can also head to Comet, which I believe has a couple locations, but we wanted to take you to our favorite coffee shop that is a little bit more special. We feel like a little bit more unique than all the other ones. It is called Bowwood. And as you can see, it is not just a coffee shop. It's a big old plant shop and a restaurant. It's all the things in one.
This is our favorite thing is getting the coffee and they're just roaming around looking at all the plants that we'll never own cuz we have no place to put them. But they have every type of plant that you could possibly dream of. They are all just beautifully maintained and so green. The whole place is decorated perfectly. It's in this amazing little like barn greenhouse structure. It's just so cool. You guys, this place is huge. Last time we came here, it was like just getting out of winter and all this stuff was closed. Like none of this green stuff was out here. It just goes on forever.
Over in this section is where the restaurant is. We have eaten there. Confirmed. It is absolutely delicious. But we have someplace else that we are going to eat at. Not as fancy as this sadly, but probably equally as yummy. When you think about St. Louis, you might not necessarily think about yummy food, but it has a surprisingly diverse and delicious culinary scene. Yeah. And there are actually a ton of foods that originated from St. Louis. There's toasted ravioli, St. Louis style pizza, the slinger, and of course, ooey gooey buttercake. But it's also just got some amazing restaurants. And this one
behind me is one we've been dying to check out. This is the Blue City Deli. People absolutely rave about the sandwiches here. In fact, Yelp rated it the best restaurant in the Midwest. Well, there's a line. That's usually a good sign. Yes. Yes, it is. We're getting the recommendations because we have no idea what to get. There's just too many options on the menu. Okay, that was difficult, y'all. We've never been here before, so we didn't quite know what to get. So, she ran through everything and basically what we're learning is that everything is the
best here. So, you can't go wrong. The sandwiches have arrived. I got the roast beef. Looks absolutely delicious. I tried to keep it simple, but Allison went with the mufaletta, which looks delicious as well. You know, this place is legit because, see how they carve out the bread so they can fit even more meat in there? That's the sign of a good sandwich place. The flavors are obviously awesome. Like, they know exactly what they're doing. And the roast beef is so tender, so juicy, but the ratios of everything is perfect. It's like there's barely any lettuce in there. I mean, come on. We
don't need The lettuce is there just to give you a little bit of a crunch, right? Mostly meat. The bread is super thin, but packed with flavor. Even though it's super thin, it's still really kind of gooey and doughy in there. It is fantastic. As Eric mentioned, he kept it super simple, but I wanted all the flavor, so I got the Moffetta. It's got salami and ham and turkey. I believe it's got proolone cheese, and then it has the olive salad on there. It's going to be a flavor explosion. You say explosion.
Oh, I love olive. It's delicious. Super savory, super salty, super tangy, all the best things in there. There's the perfect amount of meat. The cheese is really thick and delicious. And then a whole heaping of the olive salad. And as is tradition, sandwich. Cheers. St. Louis Sammy. Cheers. Well, like any major city, St. Louis has no shortage of museums. And while we could go to art galleries orformational museums, we decided to come here instead to City Museum, which is not at all about the city of St. Louis. Now, this is a wild basically freerange art museum. It's just comprised of all these intricate metal walkways. Stuff that's very easy to cut yourself on, burn yourself on because it gets so hot in
sun. It's actually a very dangerous place by the looks of it. It's like those metal slides we used to slide down that would just burn your head off literally. Or if you were cool like my grandma, you'd give us some wax paper and we'd go flying down that thing like a freaking rocket. When you were talking about a metal slide that could kill you, is this the kind you were talking about? That's precisely it. Yeah. We just need a little more sun and then it'll be like our childhood, dude. Even just this bridge feels like it's going to fall out from under you. Is this all sturdy? Definitely need some WD40 though. If I leave here without getting hurt, that will be a surprise. That will be a shock.
I will be very impressed. What is happening? Where am I? Every two seconds we're bonking something. I just nailed my shin on this. Alison bonked her head up there. I hit my back on that. Should you get like a complimentary hospital stay after this? I think we found this weird tube that's made out of these really skinny pieces of metal. It's just hovering over nothingness. It just looks like a stretched out slinky. Looks like I'm getting sucked into the void. It does. I'm dinged up. I've hit my head. I'm going to have a bruise on my ass from this for sure. I realize now how this works. It's got a big steel cable running through it. That's how it holds
it up. If it wasn't for that boop, dead. OW. I HIT IT. I HIT A BALL. OH, did you hit your bum on that? Yes. That was the worst side experience of my entire life. This is where I live and die. Everything about this scene right here just looks improbable. We finally made it to the airplane. Get on in there. This is the only way out of here. You got to fly it out. It smells like an old airplane in here. Holy moly.
I need a co-pilot. Get on in here. Got to fly standing up. We're crouching. I guess I get to sit. She looks like a worthy vessel. Oh, I see. The navigation isn't set right. Yeah, that's what it is. Do you want this set to norm or O-ride? We're going with Oide. Sound like a jacket. I'm free. This looks like a little music video, huh? What do you think? Are we in a human kaleidoscope right now? DJ, pump it. It doesn't work this way. Ow. Choke me. It doesn't. Right now we're in that bus that you saw hanging over the top of the building. It was pretty cool. Like right now you're
just hovering over nothing. Kind of freaky. Jesus. Gotcha. Well, we made it to the tippity top. We're on the rooftop now of the city museum. These views are pretty great. You can see the entire downtown from up here. Yeah, it really gives like Chicago vibes from here because, you know, St. Louis doesn't really have an iconic skyline other than the arch, but from up here it kind of does. I'm going to say that we conquered the city museum. Or maybe rather it conquered us because I just bonked my head for the 50th time and it was a whopper. It about knocked me out. So I think I'm done.
Yeah. I don't think I've felt so much fear or pain in the name of fun in my entire life. But it was a blast. Made us feel like kids again. Uh but I think that's enough of that. We're going to go behave like adults for the rest of the video. Kind of. Almost left you guys behind. You're coming with me. So, y'all might have noticed that we are not in our normal car. And that is because, if you've been following along, you know that right when we pulled up into Missouri, we had a horrible coolant leak. Our radiator went completely bad, and it has been in the mechanic since then. So, in the meantime, we rented this Kia Telluride on Turo, and we wanted to give them a quick shout out for partnering with us once again on
this video. Turo is the better way to rent whenever you need a car, and we have personally been using them to rent cars for almost 10 years now. They seriously make the rental process so much easier. With Turo, I can choose the exact car I want. I can pick it up wherever it's most convenient for me and keep it for as long as I need. And for anyone traveling soon for summer, Turo is also available at 160 plus airports across the US. You can also have your car delivered directly to your home or hotel, which saves a bunch of time and makes things way more convenient. We really can't recommend Turo enough. It is our favorite way to rent a car. And if you'd like to try Turo for yourself,
just click the link in the description, or you can scan the handy QR code that is on the screen right now to go check it out. All right, that was a nice little pit stop, but are you ready to get back to exploring St. Louis? Yes. I want to see, eat, and drink more things. And more importantly, get back into the AC of the car because it is so hot and muggy outside today. Let's go. Seriously. Okay, let's go. So, all this running around has gotten us in the mood for a sweet treat. So, we are trying one of the most iconic desserts here in St. Louis. That is Ted Drew's frozen custard, y'all. And we have never had this out in the wild. Oo,
I'm excited. A first for us. You're dancing. You haven't even tasted it yet. I know. I'm just, you guys, we never get ice cream cuz Eric won't let us get ice cream. So, I'm very excited about this. There are a couple locations in St. Louis, but we came to this one because it is the historic Route 66 location. So, this sits right on Route 66. They literally hand these to us upside down. And apparently, they have to hold them upside down for a certain amount of time. You may think this is frozen custard, but this is actually concrete. That is what they call it because I
guess it's got the uh thickness of concrete. It's a little bit melted now, but when he hands it to you, I can assure you it is very, very thick. They have a bunch of flavors, but you know, I am a basic. So, I went with vanilla, which is like the classic frozen custard flavor. All right. Super fresh, super delicious. I mean, tell me that doesn't look incredible. You wa I spilled some of it. Like a lot of it. And you're still spilling it. I'm just going to eat it. It's a big bite. Woo! Baby, that is fantastic. Oh my god.
M. It definitely gives like thick whipping cream. That's exactly what it tastes like with sugar in it. We actually make our own homemade whipped cream. And I always taste the heavy whipping cream before we mix it up. That's what this is. Ooh, vanilla is the way to go. Man, that is just perfect. I really thought we should have split one, but I'm definitely going to eat this whole thing. Well, speaking of, can I please eat mine? It's melting on the sidewalk. No, it's all mine. So, what makes it frozen custard? Well, it's basically a super dense dessert that's made from milk, cream, sweeteners, and pasteurized
egg yolk, but it's pretty similar to ice cream except it has the addition of the eggs, and it uses like a slow turnurning process, so there's a lot less air in it, so it's much thicker. I got a blueberry, lemon, graham cracker version. They just have whole freaking fresh blueberries in there and big hunks of graham crackers. Oh my gosh. Oh, that is tangy and sweet. The custard in there is, you're right, it tastes like frozen whipped cream or something like that. Oh, it tastes like childhood.
Yeah, we said we were going to do adult things from here on out, but screw that. We lied. You're like a little addict over here, man. Don't look at me. Look away. Well, we came and we conquered Ted Drews. I have a horrible tummy ache now because I ate most of that. I couldn't stop. I was a fiend. Oh, man. I know what's going to fix that. What? Some good oldfashioned alcohol. That's what I need right now. All right, we're switching back to adult fun, right?
Yeah. Okay. Next up, we came just south of downtown to Cherokee Street, which is this long walking street that is super interesting. There's a bunch of charming shops and vintage shops and cafes. It's also like a historic district. So, you'll see little signs and plaques as you walk around. And this is one of the parts of town that's like kind of rough, but also kind of awesome at the same time. Charm, character. That's what I say that it has. But this area happens to be home to one of our favorite bars in the entire city. No, it is surprisingly not a brewery. In fact, it is a natural wine bar called Sippy. And I just think that is one of the coolest names ever.
It is very adorable. All right, let's go get our natural wine on. Let's do some sipping at Sippy. Are we ready to go? Yeah. Yeah, let's go. Sorry, I missed your joke. I was about to say that was a very rude reaction, sir. I was thinking of like how to transition, but yeah, good one. I knew it. Well, we love this place. It's just so chill and intimate. The front is like this old converted house that's just like this little narrow cozy living room almost. And then obviously this big outside space and they often have live
music or they have events out here in the summertime. Plus, they have cool wines that you can't get anywhere else. I went with their house rosé. It's a sparkling rosé and it's look how dark it is. It's like a plum color almost. And I went with their orange wine, which no does not have any actual oranges in it. It's named after just the color because of the way that they make the wine. According to the interwebs, instead of pressing the white grapes and removing the skins immediately, the juice fermentss with the grape skins and the seeds for days and months, resulting in an amber hue and a complex, bold, sometimes funky flavor profile.
It's like a scrumpy cider. Oh, yeah. If you guys don't know what scrumpy cider is, we had that for the first time in England. And it's cider that basically tastes like the barn or the dirt or the earth. And of course, it's natural, which I don't know if it necessarily means it's organic, but it means it doesn't have any of the added stuff that they put in when during the normal wine making process, which apparently is a lot of stuff. Well, we got to cheers. That was a successful first day in St. Louis. I know. It's been lovely. And it's like feeling like summertime out here, you guys. I am digging the Midwest.
Yeah, summer looks good on you, kid. Especially just this whole place looks good on you. Does it look good right here? Cuz I think I got the tiniest bit of a sunburn. Of course you did. It's interesting when you're driving around St. Louis, just the way the urban landscape is laid out. We mentioned how we really like all the historic buildings, but what's really strange is that you'll have one historic building that looks like really wellkept up, like recently renovated, and it'll be right next to one that's completely run down and abandoned. And some of the buildings look like they should be abandoned, but there's actually a functioning business
in there, like a bar or something. Some of them have almost the whole front facade, but if you look through the windows, the roof has collapsed. Somehow the front hung on, but the whole back was like ripped to pieces, like Godzilla showed up, destroyed that one building, and then got the hell out of there. Yeah. So, St. Louis is a surprisingly green city. In fact, there are tons of parks all over the place. The biggest one of those being Forest Park. And would you believe that it is actually bigger than Central Park? So, it is a huge park. There's so many different green spaces, so much to explore. But, we decided to come to a different park today. We're actually in a smaller park called Tower Grove Park. And right attached to the
top of that park is the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It's a must do thing when you're in St. Louis, and it's something we've never done, but we've heard absolutely amazing things. It should be stunningly beautiful. Let's go uh check it out. You coming? Oh, me? Shot's over. Okay, let's go. In the middle of the park, you're going to find this huge dome known as the Climatron, which I'm transformer or something. It does. Uh, it does also look like a transformer, but I'm pretty sure there's just going to be more flowers on the inside.
All right, lead the way. I feel like we're in Hunger Games and that's like the force field around the arena. Isn't that what it looks like? There's something really cool about all this lush organic greenery and then something just incredibly man-made covering the whole thing. Well, now I feel like I've been transported to like a French chateau or something. It makes me want to go to the vineyards and the castles and sip wine while looking at beautiful manicured gardens. But they do need to hand you some uh
white wine, huh? Oh, that would make this Oh, it is, as you can tell, just as humid out here as it was indoors. And we are getting a little glisteny. Have you ever frolked naked on the water like that? Sure have not. Wait, actually, in Jamaica, I frolocked a little bit in the ocean. That is true. She looked about like that. We made a quick drive down to the riverfront area to check out a super unique and special area of St. Louis that you're not going to find in any other city. This is the Mural Mile. It's a mile long wall and every square inch
of it is covered with different murals and artwork and all kinds of crazy stuff. And you said the Mural Mile. I didn't think it was going to be like a literal mile of murals. Most of it is actually really detailed and uh done by real artists, you guys. This wall is in a very industrial part of town. Very rough around the edges. There's nothing but like trains. It's a bunch of rail yards, old bridges, destroyed buildings. A little sketchy, but I feel like it just adds to the vibe, right? It's definitely worth it to come and see. And I'd say the murals skew a little dark
anyway, so it kind of fits the vibe down here. So, next up, we came to the Delmare Loop, which is probably the coolest walking street in all of St. Louis. Yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, it's Delmare Boulevard. And as you walk down it, you're going to see so many different shops, so many different restaurants. There's weird little quirky art installations, tons of murals on the buildings, things like that, just like your classic eclectic walking street. But there is one shop in particular that we are very excited to go to. It is called vintage vinyl and it should be this huge vintage vinyl shop.
Well said, kid. Yeah. Oh man, y'all look what I found. Teen Jesus. I'm pretty sure it's pronounced changes. If you know, you know. Oh yeah. Well, there's at least 20 albums that I would like to take home today, but I have to narrow it down if I don't want to spend $1,000. I don't know if you guys know this. Records are very, very expensive. Like $25 is the basically the cheapest that you're going to get one for a new one. So here's what I settled on. Fant memory of a day, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. I've been listening to it straight for like a year. Rocky Valado Makers deep cut, man. That's old school.
Come on. If you guys know about this, leave a comment. This is Super Heaven. They have a song called Youngest Daughter, which is like one of my favorite songs ever. I don't really know any of their other stuff, but that song is on this album, so I'm getting it. And then, of course, System of Down to Toxicity. Yeah. When we first got together, this was all the raid. Okay, I'm going to limit it to these four. And then we're going to spend the rest of our money on some delicious, delicious food.
Yes, please. I'm so hungry. Let's do it. We are on our way right now to a ramen spot that we have been dying to go to for a long time. But every time we drive by it, there is a huge line out the door that looks like it's going to take at least an hour. And today is no different. We're going to wait in it though for you guys. Well, it took about 30 minutes, but we have finally been chosen. And when you walk in, the place is way more intimate than I realized. Like, be prepared to potentially sit with other people. We just got lucky and got a little spot on the end. Everything is no frrills here. Like, you go get your own drinks, you get your own water, you get your own cutlery, you also order by QR code, so
they don't even really have servers. But the main event has arrived, and it is a delicious bowl of ramen. I mean, have you seen a more beautiful site? So, this is the pork tonkatu. This is a homemade broth, homemade noodles. You got the bits of pork there. Then they got the little bamboo shoots, of course, a little bit of seaweed over there. For the first bite, got to get some noodles. Got to get some pork. Oh yeah, baby. Confirmed. It is very, very delicious. The broth is super savory. Really strong pork flavor. I read some reviews that said it was going to be like overly salty, but it's really not. It's kind of
perfectly balanced. It's not the best pork I've ever had in ramen, but I'd say it's up there. That char has a nice bit of flavor to it. The question is, is it worth an hourong wait? Well, you come here and you decide. It's good ramen. For our final stop, we came to the St. Louis Foundry, which is this gigantic food hall that is right near downtown. What makes it very special is, as you can see, it is in this repurposed old building that was in use like a hundred years ago. I'm pretty sure it was some kind of a machine shop. I think they made some kind of little hinges or something like that. This is all the original stuff that they used to use to build whatever the heck they built here.
Yeah, it's a pretty cool space. Very industrial. And I know earlier we said how a lot of the buildings are in disrepair, like kind of basically destroyed in St. Louis, but what I love is this building could have been like that, but instead they took it and repurposed it. It looks like you're on a factory floor, right? It does. Fact, the floor still looks like the factory floor. This is the original floor. All they did was seal it. Sure, the architecture is cool, but more importantly, there are a lot of delicious food stalls, and that is one
of our favorite things is coming here and getting something completely different every time. And that is what we are about to do right now. Yes. More food. Well, I think I won you guys. I found this AfroCaribbean place, which just sounded super unique. I went with the oxtail. It looks pretty fantastic if I do say so myself. But dang is it a lot of food. Wo. Can you believe I'm in St. Louis and getting something that's like I'm in a Caribbean island. So, this oxtail should be very slowcooked to the point where it just like falls off of the bone. All right. And I'm going to start off with just a little taste of the meat itself.
That is incredible. Yes, that's the best thing we've eaten in this whole video. The meat is so tender. It's bursting with flavor. It's like not overly salty. It's got a little bit of sweetness. Like there's some kind of like brown sugar or something sweet in there. Dang, that is tasty. Okay, confirmed. That's pretty delicious. But let's see if I can top it. No, I can't. But it is going to be yummy. I went to a place called Massage Mediterranean. They cut the chicken right off of the spit. I mean, you can't go wrong with schwarma. It is so tender and delicious. Oop, and full of flavor. I believe this is turmeric rice, and it is super flavorful as well.
Well, y'all, this has been a super fun and delicious trip to St. Louis. Always forget though, like we have this cool city at our fingertips whenever we're back visiting family. But if you have any fun things that you do while you're here or have done, let us know so we can do them in the future. But this will conclude our time in the Midwest for a little bit, y'all. We are going north, way far north. Tomorrow we fly to Seattle and then we're doing an Alaskan cruise, y'all. And we are very excited about it. So freaking excited. We're going to go see glaciers and all the things. We're going to do the Inside Passage, which we did once on a ferry, but we're going to do it in a big old ship. It's going to be a first for us.
But we need to wrap this up because we are completely up to date on our videos. That's why we haven't posted in a while. And I have to edit this today. Yes. Sorry y'all. We've been slacking a little bit with the wedding and visiting family. We always get a little behind with things. With that, goodbye adventures. We'll see you on the road.
