Antiques Roadshow - 7/7/2017

Today we head out on a road trip to St. Louis for a taping of the Antiques Roadshow scheduled for Saturday morning. We had requested tickets both times the show had taped in Omaha over the years, but never received a shot.  This time we logged on and requested on several shows in the upper Midwest area and were surprised when we won for this show.  Although our goal was to depart Omaha at 9:00 AM, we finally got on the road at 11:06; having to stop at both the local bank for some spendable green, and drop off some outgoing mail for clients at the U.S. Post Office.

This is our first road trip in the Subaru CrossTrek, our trusty (we hope) new blue chariot. Loaded down with our small traveling bags, a large pink suitcase with some antique paintings and porcelain, and a collapsible 2-wheeler with two larger paintings wrapped in a moving blanket, we set off. Of course we were provisioned with water, cheese sticks, some remaining homemade potato salad and a couple of chicken sandwiches on Kiev Pumpernickel rye for snacking. Also some bottles of wine to enjoy in the evening, or to celebrate upon learning we were newly wealthy with our treasures.

Headed south on I-29 with the outside temperature headed to 91 F, we took a hard right at Kansas City onto I-70 and headed across the up and down highway through the rolling, but boring scenery of Missouri.  As we lost the NPR signal somewhere east of KCMO, we tried out our new fangled podcast attempt.  It worked, and were able to listen to a number of NPR articles, but we will need to explore this media at length in order to find podcasts we really are interested in, rather than whatever random articles crop up on the one feed we have discovered so far.

As the navigator dozed, not having much to do as we tootled along the concrete ribbon of I-70, the driver's mind wandered over past road trips.  Locked into speed control on this wide strip of concrete, occasionally having to log in and out of speed as fellow travelers decided to stay at speed limit in the passing lane, I reflected on how different this American way of driving is from the narrow, left side driving of England a month ago.  Although the U.K. limited access freeways are similar to our Interstate system, they seem so much more interesting in their scenery.  I will say that the idiots on the English freeways seemed directly related to their American cousins.

We stopped for a fuel top-up near Columbia, Missouri and then headed in towards St. Louis, arriving on the outskirts around 5:15.  Traffic became heavy as we neared closer to the city, most directly related to a few accidents and the heavy rush hour traffic of a Friday afternoon.  In the 95 F heat, we arrived at our destination hotel, Drury Inn at 6:30.  This is a 7-story former YMCA hotel right adjacent to the Union Station in downtown.  The building has been beautifully rehabbed, and offers free breakfast and free cocktails (but only until 7:00 PM.). We dumped our bags and hurried to the bar for our share, enjoying a double pour of Merlot.

We then adjourned to the attached restaurant, Lombardo's Trattoria, which has been in business since 1934.  We started with a Dirty Martini and glass of Pinot Noir, split an hors d'oevre of escargot in garlic and Parmesan, a salad each (unfortunately over dressed, but tasty) and then split another glass of Pinot Noir and a sausage rigatoni with mushroom, onion and a spicy creamy tomato sauce.  This was an excellent pasta dish which we would gladly try again.

By 9:00 we were back in our room and crawling into a king sized bed, ready to hit it early the next morning for our chance at a money shot.