Midwestern Hospitality

We came, we worked, we ate and we left. Nothing like doing a business trip in under 24 hours! One of my colleagues and I flew into St. Louis yesterday evening just as the sun was setting, and we were greeted by a really pretty view.

I always fly with a window seat because I love looking at the scenery of a new place when we land. I've been to St. Louis once before, but it was super fast drive through after a 4-week cross country trip and we basically waved at the Arch and took a quick picture before passing on through. This trip wasn't much different, unfortunately, but I did enjoy getting to see the beautiful landscape on our way in. There are huge rivers and smaller inlets and lakes surrounding the city, which made the sunset reflection really amazing.

So if I had to describe St. Louis in one word, after having only been here for a day, it would be: Hospitable. The people are so incredibly nice, and every person we met from the shuttle drivers to the hotel front guest person to restaurant waitstaff just wanted to make our stay as enjoyable as possible. They were so friendly and so welcoming in every way possible.

It's nice to be out of New York. ;-)

After checking into our hotel, we took a walk down the street to have dinner at a restaurant that came highly recommended by the hotel staff, Bristol's Seafood Grill at Creve Coeur.

I started with a Mediterranean salad topped with pine nuts, feta cheese and dried cherries. The menu featured a lot of really enticing options, but in the end I selected the seared sea scallops with parmesan roasted potatoes and lemony haricot vert.

I really was too full to finish all the scallops, but I couldn't take them home and I cannot let scallops go to waste...so yes, I managed to get every last one down. A delicious way to end a journey to the middle of the country.

Today we spent the day in meetings with clients, and I'm now back at the airport waiting for my flight to good ole Newark. I couldn't get a flight out until 7:30 PM, so after working on my laptop for a while in one of the lounges, I meandered over to one of the terminal restaurants for some dinner.

A quick perusal of the menu left me with only 3 vegetarian and/or seafood dinner options - pasta, a sandwich, or fish & chips. I went with the pasta.

I ate a house salad first to fill up on greens before the noodles arrived, but I still ate a good amount of that bowl. It was decent for airport fare: Grilled shrimp tossed with spinach and linguini in a citrus and roasted tomato cream sauce. I got hints of the citrus throughout, which I really liked. I'll tell you though, after not eating pasta since I started trying to eat "primal," the load up of carbs really made me feel super full. Oomph.

I've got a mere 20 minutes left until boarding time, so I'm grabbing a water and about to make my way to the gate. I downloaded a new book on my Kindle I can't wait to start reading on the plane - Prodigy, the second book in the Legend Series. I promise, I did take a break from the young adult dystopian novels in order to read a serious book (Wonder, which is a really good book and heartbreaking in so many ways - totally worth reading), but let's be serious. Airplanes call for suck-you-in-can't-stop-reading books.

Oh yeah.