Forest Park

I've stayed at this hotel before, and I shall probably stay here again whenever I next visit St Louis.  The breakfast is decent, yet free ("included in the price"), the networking works, and it's in a quite convenient place for Busch Stadium and anywhere else in the Metrorail network.

Today, I visited Forest Park, out to the west of the centre of St Louis.  I took the Metrorail west to Union Station to see whether it was any different to last time, and found that it was being completely redeveloped and was essentially a building site.  The fish were still there though!

After not staying long there, I continued the train journey to Central West End and walked the rest of the way.  There's adverts everywhere for a shuttle bus from the metro but a) it was from the next stop along; and b) it stopped running for the year on 2nd September

There's some lakes and trees, and some nice floral displays dotted around the place.

There are also winding paths throughout the park for pedestrians and cyclists, which seem to take the long way whereas the roads for the cars are direct!
 
I made it to the planetarium, but there wasn't really much there except a few displays of artefacts and interactive exhibits aimed at children.  I didn't have time to stay for the next planetarium show, as it would have finished too late for me to get back into town and to the ballpark for the 6.15pm start.

Some areas of the planetarium were closed for redevelopment too - there's an awful lot of that in St Louis at the moment.

So after a while, I returned back to the station, stopping in the shade of the trees to cool down a little from time to time.

The train was full of Cardinals supporters travelling to the stadium, even though it was still 2 and a half hours before first pitch!

It should be a 5 minute walk back to my hotel from the Metrorail stop, but it actually took 15 minutes today, because I had to wait 10 minutes to cross the final road (the hotel is just to the left of this video)

I only recorded 40 seconds of it - but this went on for a full 10 minutes, hundreds of them going past.  No sign of any law enforcement.

You can only get a vague sense of the noise from the video.

In the end, they did stop coming past - although there were a couple of 4-wheeled quad bikes that zinged past at even greater speed than the bikes.

Location: Forest Park, 5595 Grand Dr, St. Louis, MO 63112, USA

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