Chaz's and my third anniversary was this past Wednesday, January 30. On Wednesday, I had a little over two dollars stashed away in my wallet. Our bank account was empty and we wouldn't get paid for another week. So I went out and spent our last two dollars on an overly large Hershey bar, which we shared while watching The Words (excellent movie, by the way, for anyone who hasn't seen it). On the one hand, we were both a little depressed that all we could manage for our anniversary was a chocolate bar and a movie, sitting at home with the girls on a lumpy couch. On the other hand, we thought "won't this be a fun story to tell our kids when they're going through the dregs of early marriage and stressed about having 'no money?'" Either way, we enjoyed a good movie and a good candy bar and went to bed as content as we could possibly be, given the circumstances.
The next morning, Chaz called me from work and told me to check the bank account. The only reason he ever calls me and tells me to do this is if there is money in the account. If we're broke, he just sucks it up and tells me. But that morning, he made me look at the account. And as I'm logging in, I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out where we might possibly have had money come from--did he get a bonus from work that he didn't know about? Did some random stranger magically send us some money? I surely couldn't figure out anything that made any sense.
Turns out, our taxes had come in. On January 31. Guess that's what happens when you file them by the 17th....
We were no longer broke. Let me just say that when you go from having no money to having considerably a lot more money, it's a little hard to not go crazy. But we were good. We didn't...too much. We made sure we paid off a number of bills we had, we made smart decisions. We also went out for our anniversary.
As I was looking, shocked, at the new balance of our bank account, Chaz said that he wanted to go out to Pappy's. For anyone who might not know, Pappy's is a nation-famous BBQ joint in St. Louis, which Chaz has been wanting to go to for months. So I called my parents and asked if they'd be willing to take the girls overnight on Friday, so Chaz and I could go out to dinner. They graciously agreed.
Now, dinner is all fine and dandy, but I got this great idea--if we weren't going to have the kids overnight, why waste the night in our own house, in our own bed? Why not splurge? I suggested getting a hotel room and making an actual night of the night. Chaz wasn't hard to convince. So as I sat, Friday morning, browsing St. Louis hotels for a reservation for Friday night, one of Chaz's bosses suggests the Hotel Ignacio, a little boutique hotel in the Central West End. So I look it up online, and it. is. nice. It's also pricey, but this is our anniversary we're talking about, here. There's a tab marked "Specials" so I click on it, see if I might get lucky.
BBQ, beer and a bed. Perfect. The package includes a room, a $25 gift certificate to Pappy's (where we've planned to eat anyway) plus 3 bottles of Pappy's bbq sauce to take home, as well as a "growler" (a 2 liter canteen looking thing) from the Urban Chestnut Brewing Company and a free growler fill at the brewery. Within a few seconds, by a few clicks of the mouse, our reservations are made and the plan is set.
We drop the kids off at my parents around 5:30, are checking in at the hotel around 6:15. The staff is amazing--very friendly and accommodating. The building is beautiful. We're told we're on the 5th floor, so we head up, and we walk into this:
The living room is equipped with a 42' flat screen TV, a mini fridge stocked with soda, lemonade, chilled coffee, water (all free for us to take), a fireplace, and some sort of media hub (I can't remember the specific name), which looks like a kindle, but is actually a phone, computer, phone book and internet all in one. We could look at the room service menu on it, call down to the front desk to request ice & glasses, look for places to go visit or restaurants to eat at. It was kinda cool....alright, it was really cool.
The bathroom was by far the best part of the suite. There were double sinks beneath a wall to wall to ceiling mirror, which if you look closely, you will see, has a TV built in. So we can watch TV while soaking in the tub, or while brushing our teeth. It was a tad extravagant. The jacuzzi tub was huge, with wonderful jets strong enough to make reading in the tub impossible. The shower had the regular head, a handheld head (each with multiple settings) and then four jets that shot out from the side of the shower. It was heaven.
The bedroom was simple--a bed, desk and TV. But the bed was king sized, with a tempurpedic mattress. The wall (seen at the left of the bed picture) was a floor to ceiling window, which unfortunately you can't appreciate because it was dark and we had pulled the shade. But the two lights hanging on the sides of the bed didn't get any brighter than that because the window provided such ample light that man-made lights were not necessary.
All said and done, it was a very nice suite.
As I said, we checked into our room around 6:15 and we told the guy and gal who checked us in we were planning on going to Pappy's for dinner. Their advice? Better hurry, they'll be out of food soon. So after unloading our bags and taking a very quick look around (I took the pictures of the suite later) we headed out for some BBQ.
Now, Pappy's is quite the interesting place. You walk in and you are not seated. You're not even allowed to seat yourself. You walk through the place, up to the register where you place your order. No menus. There's a huge chalkboard above your head telling you what's available and you decide what you want on the spot...and hope they're not already sold out of what you want. **By the time we got there, they were out of ribs and brisket.** Once you order, you go find whatever table might be available and take a seat. You've barely gotten settled at your table before your food is being served.
The busboys are hanging around watching hockey, or football, or baseball, waiting for the next table to clear out so they can clean it up quickly for the next set of people. They're also very friendly and talkative. The food is excellent. The seasonal hours sign says "Open 11-7ish." They stay open until they run out of food. They run out of food, they slap a "sold out" sign on the door, quit serving and close up.
We will definitely be going back. Especially after one of the busboys found out it was our first time there, asked us what our favorite sauce was and then handed us a free bottle of it on our way out the door. Awesome place. You should go.
Next, we headed over to the Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, a small microbrewery in the Central West End. It's basically like a winery, but with beer. They've got close to 20 different beers on tap and you can sample as many as you like for free. Once you find one you like, you can order a glass of it, or if you can't choose, you can order a "flight" which consists of 1/2 - 3/4 filled glasses of 4 different beers....for $5. They also serve wine, limited liquor and German/Bavarian type food--wiesswurst served on pretzel bread, soft pretzels served with cheese and butter sauce, cheese plates, etc. Some of the patrons were what Chaz called "beer snobs" but he enjoyed himself immensely. Myself, not being a beer drinker...or a wine drinker...simply took pleasure in seeing him have such a good time.
At the end of the night he had his growler filled with the beer he decided he liked best and we headed back to the hotel. You would have thought that being a young couple celebrating their 3rd anniversary, we'd have taken advantage of the circumstances, stayed up late, drank plenty of the liquor we took with us, driven the neighbors crazy. In actuality, we were both exhausted by the end of the day and ended up in bed and asleep by 10:30. But that was ok. We'd enjoyed our day.
We also enjoyed a lazy morning the next day. We got up, took advantage of the awesomely awesome shower and packed up. We checked out around 10 and went to get breakfast before heading home. The media hub I mentioned previously had suggested a place called the City Diner, so that's where we headed. It's literally next door to the Fox Theatre. As we were pulling up to the parking lot, we noticed a fire truck sitting in front of the door. Up for an adventure, we parked the car and got out. Apparently, there had been a grease fire, which had been put out, but the place was still filled with lingering smoke, therefore the smoke alarm couldn't be reset. Annoying as the noise was, we liked the look of the place and didn't really feel like trying to find somewhere else to go, so we took a table and placed our orders. After about half an hour, the smoke alarm was finally shut off, followed by a rousing round of applause by the customers and sighs of relief by the staff. The food was good, the staff was very professional especially given the circumstances and the atmosphere was just fun.
We're planning on moving into Missouri within the year so that Chaz can be closer to work. I look forward to being able to scour the city for places like this once we live a little closer. The weekend was just so much fun--we discovered a number of new places, all of which we would be more than happy to return to, and who knows how many more of them exist within the city limits of St. Louis?
I was raised by a native Chicagoan. I was bred to "hate" St. Louis. But while I am and always will be a die hard Chicago Bears fan and I will never, Never, NEVER like the Cardinals, I can say that I am developing a fondness for this city I live so close to and I look forward to exploring it and learning to love it in the future.
Here's to a wonderful 3rd anniversary...
Until next time...
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