The Final Trip in the Central Region

The final trip of the year was spent in the state of Missouri. It started with a stay in St. Louis. A visit to East City Deli - was delicious - Italian beef sandwich! Afterwards we visited the Anheuser Busch factory again and purchased some gifts; however, we took the partial tour and then received our 2 free beers - seasonal winter lager and a blueberry flavored beer. That evening, I made a trip to the Scottrade Center, home of the St. Louis Blues. The venue was beautiful and the seats were great; however, I paid more for one beer at the stadium than I have ever paid for one beer at any other stadium. The game featured the Columbus Blue Jackets - captained by Rick Nash - and the Blues of course. The national anthem was of course sung by a blues singer, but it was unique in the sense that the words were displayed on the jumbo screen and the audience was invited to sing along like a kareoke bar. The game was high scoring, which was great - because every time the Blues scored a man known as "Towel Man" would count down to 3 and then launch a towel from the upper deck down to the lower deck...a real St. Louis legend. There was also a humongous fight that went on in the middle of the game. The two players battled it out forever...legitimately 5 pictures taken over the course of the fight. After a Blues' win we visited the Pourhouse in St. Louis and had a couple of drinks before retiring for the night.

The next day was spent on Washington Avenue. Here we hung out at the Dubliner, and then went to SideBar. At the end of the evening we raided the street vendors for their remaining offerings before calling it an evening.

Finally on Saturday I participated in a Christmas Pub Crawl where I visited the Tin Can - only serves beer in cans, Colorado Bob's - a bar owned by Bob who is originally from Colorado. Later on we visited another bar and I tried Whipped Cream Vodka - mixed with Cranberry Juice. Pretty tasty shooter!

Monday Night Football was spent at Sybergs located in the basement of the hotel across the street from the one we were staying at. Tuesday night we played trivia at the Mac and had St. Louis style pizza. Afterwards we trekked across town and played some shuffleboard with some recently made friends.

The week in St. Louis was split up by a trip to Joplin, MO. Which is basically Oklahoma. A night in the hotel with some Outback carryout and a great Knicks v. Celtics game made this town bearable.

Afterwards it was back to St. Louis for my flight home. On my final evening we visited City Diner and a extremely hipster bar called The Handle Bar. The bar was littered with bicycles and flannel shirts. I normally do not mind the hipster scene; however this was the largest group of obnoxious hipsters ever - perhaps could have set the world record for hipster idiots in one location. They participated in such things as bar stands - others lift your feet over your head with your hands on the bar (similar to a keg stand) and then the bartender assists you in drinking your PBR, pee-wee soccer tunnels to get to the bathroom - hipsters line up along both sides of the narrow passageway to the bathroom and then scream and pummel you with gentle punches as you walk through. Regardless these people love bicycles and flannel and obviously created very new and some-what trendy bar games...I guess.

Anyways that wraps my adventures of 2010. I will be home for the next several weeks. Before shipping off to the West Coast for a whole new set of adventures in a whole new territory!