A woman sensed we were lost so asked where we were going. She walked with us until we got to where we needed to be.
Purchased tickets to go up the arch and also for an hour long boat tour on the Mississippi. There is a lot of construction around the arch so it was a treck to get to the only side that was open. Didn't have to wait long to go up. Wonderful views.
When we came down there was a video on the making of the arch. It is a great video for anyone that likes to know how things came about without all the modern equipment of today. The arch was started in 1963 and finished in 1965.
It is an awkward time when we finished the video. We had time to do something close but nothing was close because of the construction. We chose wisely. It was between 75 and 80 degrees, light warm breeze from the south, and slight overcast. We ate a little lunch on a patio and listened to jazz. Wonderful and so relaxing.
The boat ride was relaxing also and learned a number of facts about St Louis. This is the first place we have been in a long while where there was no talk of war. Learning about the different wars was very interesting but this was a nice change.
After the boat ride, we made our way back to downtown and walked around some and then headed for a metro stop. We needed some guidance but finally found where we needed to be. There was an alert that the train would only go so far - "because of an incident" - and then we would be bussed to a stop further down the line.
Some details were left out when we first were telling about our train ride. We were 2 of only about 10 people on the entire train that had fair skin. Ok, back to the "incident". As the train was going someone said that a metro security officer had been shot. Well we got to the end stop because of the incident, got off the train and boarded a bus a few minutes later. The bus was packed: standing and sitting as tight as possible. There were only 4 white people. A couple observations need to be made. 1)These were all just people - there were a number of hospital workers on their way home from work. 2) there were no white people sitting. 3) there was no anger. We talked to a couple of people about just stuff - no sense of anyone being hostile towards us.
The bus stopped at all the stops that the train was supposed to. At the incident stop there were police and news reporters. When we get to the stop where we were to reboard the train, we were told to stay on the bus and go to the stop where our car was. There were police - lots of police - at this stop also. We finally make it to our stop we found to our car fine and back to our room.
The news said that a young 20's man didn't have the fare needed so he shot the security officer. He then started to board the train and lo and behold there were two armed policmen on the train. The man fled to some bushes, wouldn't comply with instructions, and appeared to be a threat. He was shot several times.
Finished our evening quietly in our room.
