Day Nine

Woke up in a Holiday Inn express somewhere between Memphis and St Louis.
Drove to St Louis.
Loads of people around for some sort of event in the Centre of St Louis. We went to park the car and John asked the person who sold us the parking ticket what was going on. He thought that was a rather stupid question until we told him we were from the UK. They were playing a professional American Football game. We had a look round but there were no tickets left. There was almost a carnival atmosphere with different music stages and loads of different stalls selling food.
As we couldn't get tickets we walked into the quieter bits of St Louis without the crowds. We stopped in a bar for a beer. Proper American bar but very different to the one in Oklahoma City. Had a miniature railway running around the top of the bar. Decided to stay for food.
We then went to see the massive arch in St Louis. We had no idea why it was built. Once we got there we learnt that there was a underground museum in between the ends of the arch. This was the "Museum of Westward Expansion". We had a look through the museum which made us feel rather uneasy as while there was much talk of the destruction of the native Indian culture and the expansion west there was not a hint of remorse for the effective destruction of a race.
After we left the museum with a bad taste and went up the arch. To do that there is a strange lift/track system with 6 capsules with 5 people in each sit and it takes you up to the top. The journey was rather cramped.
One up the to the view was pretty impressive. Saw the Mississippi and St Louis. And saw a helicopter take off from above.
We came back down in the same lift thing and then got back to the car. We then drove towards Chicago. Stopped at a Holiday Inn express somewhere between St Louis and Chicago. We had dinner in a Mexican place, served by a proper weedy American geek - could have been straight out of a teen movie.
Headed back and went to sleep.