Upon leaving the Old Cathedral, you’re right near the Arch.
Around the park, there’s a staircase that leads down to the waterfront. The shore/beach is unlike any other beach I’ve seen – no dirt or sand, but cobblestone.
Before heading into and up the Arch, I took a stroll through the park. Too bad it wasn’t colder, I would have loved to walk on the ice. I can only imagine that the place is full of ice skaters when it’s cold enough.
It’s been at least eighteen years since I’ve been to the Gateway Arch. They’ve done a complete remodel of the entry and underground area – it’s quite nice! After buying your ticket, you head down below ground to the bottom of the arch. There’s a history museum that you walk through, and then a large open area with a cafe, gift shop, bathrooms, and many places to sit. I suppose lines can get quite long on busy days. There was hardly anyone here on this cold and breezy Monday morning. What a great day to be a tourist!
Once you head towards the entrance to the pods that go to the top of the Arch, you have to enter at your assigned time. They lead you through a hallway and make you watch a video which is completely irrelevant to the Arch other than it is filled with cultural references to the time period in which it was built. It was a fine multimedia presentation, but they could have skipped it and let us get on our way. Of course, I had to take a picture or two of it since we were standing there anyways.
The pods themselves only hold about five people each and the doorway to enter the pod is four feet tall. The lighting is super cool in there too – sixties space-age blue. Perfect for a cool selfie background – also shot with the X-T3.
Famished, I got on Yelp to find a good place for lunch before heading to my next destination (I shot the photo of my sandwich using the RAW photo mode of Lightroom CC on my iPhone 8 Plus).
