And busy it was.

Our first stop in the morning was picking up my second cousin, once removed, whom we had met for the first time a few months ago in Virginia Beach. She is an artist and lives in an apartment building for artists in downtown St. Louis. The building, a classic building formerly an office and retail building provides affordable apartments for artists along with studio space and other amenities. Washington DC is talking about converting over capacity office space to residential and is finding it so challenging. St. Louis has found the trick, it appears, and has done it time and again.

We drove a mile or a little more to the Lafayette Square neighborhood and a little coffee house on Park Street called the Park Avenue Cafe and had breakfast and talked. Then we drove all around the Lafayette Square neighborhood and looked at the gentrified old housing stock. it’s quite a classy area now. When I lived here it was hopelessly falling to pieces. Now virtually all homes have been renovated at least once. Most of the houses date from the second half of the nineteenth century. The park itself, the oldest public park west of the Mississippi, was laid out in the 1830s. The neighborhood also has many shops and restaurants.

From there, a little wandering around downtown and close by areas and then lunch at a combined nursery and restaurant, Bowood, located midtown on Olive Street. Here we were with a law school friend and his wife (obviously also a friend) and an old college friend whom I had not seen in many years.

Then back to Missouri Baptist Hospital where we spent a few hours with my cousin, who has been moved out of the ICU and looked good.  And then driving down Geyer Road into Kirkwood, where we met another couple with whom we have been friends for almost 50 years at Peppe’s Apt. 2, where we had a nice Italian dinner. Well ..with one exception. I didn’t get what I thought I ordered, but didn’t know that I didn’t get and only thought it was a very subtle version of what I ordered until I discovered that Mark, the waiter, and I the customer heard and said very different things. And who knows? Maybe I ordered by accident what he thought I ordered. After all, nothing is simple these days.

At any rate, one more great conversation.

We are heading southeast this morning, eventually to wind up in  Montgomery, Alabama. We are sorry we couldn’t see everyone in St. Louis this trip, but in three days we saw Donna, Ed, Richard, Jacci, Bob, Simone, Andrea, Judy, Michael, Wendy, Brigid, Pat, Nora, Molly, Suresh (and kids), Stuart, Betsy, Fran, Peggy and Charlie. Not bad.