Through the Gateway

Last weekend we made a trip to St. Louis and Columbia. In St. Louis we saw the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra perform the Top 99 Concert. The first half was terrific, beginning with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro Overture, then Strauss' On the Beautiful Blue Danube, followed by Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony 5 (Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott), and my favorite Holst's The Planets Jupiter. I would have left at intermission if I knew just how boring it would be… Bernstein's Candide Overture, Beethoven's Romance 2 in F Major, Dvorak's From the New World Symphony 9, and Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave. Tchaikovsky's okay, but with the Beethoven and Dvorak were so unbelievably slow, and the Candide being only so-so, I wasn't caring too much.

Saturday was fun. Up the Gateway Arch and to the Missouri Botanical Gardens that was hosting a Chinese Culture festival. We met up with Hoyt's grand-aunt and shared our wedding/honeymoon albums, then burnt to a nice crisp walking around the gardens and watching a Chinese parade. We hightailed it to Columbia to visit a good friend staying up very late sharing our pictures again. Sunday we walked around the Mizzou campus and enjoyed an organic restaurant, bookstore, and custard shop. After watching Drop Dead Gorgeous, we drove back, slightly pinker than when we left and feeling pretty good and tired.

A few pictures from the trip, but still on the camera for now…