December Holidays: Part 3

The journey home.

Part of the agreement of driving this year instead of flying was the deal that we would break up the trip. This was especially important for the route from North Carolina to Kansas. You know, that causal half-country drive.  We've done it in one day before and it was painful. Never again. This year we took two days to get home, stopping again in Saint Louis. 

On the way, I found a local coffee shop to stop at in Nashville, similar to what we had done in Indy. This place was called Crema and was very cool. (The coffee was great too!) Turns out, we were only a few minutes away from where my cousin Jenny lives. (We found this out later). So maybe we'll be back here someday. Who knows,

One of the benefits of stopping in St Louis again was that we got to return to Aya Sofia, the Turkish restaurant we visited two Christmases ago. Actually, once we decided we were going to stop in St Louis to break the trip up, I immediately began plotting another visit, especially since the only place in Wichita that served Turkish food closed. (That was the saddest day). We actually got saw in our "usual booth." We feasted our hearts out and it was delicious. 

Kadafi was the star of the show again

Our pitstop for the night was at the St Louis Union Station Hotel, which used to be the old train station. The place was massive! So much so that we opted to valet our car so we wouldn't have to navigate our way through the building. The only bummer was that the great hall was closed the evening we arrived due to a wedding. But we got to explore it briefly in the morning. 

When we left the following morning, we, of course, stopped at a coffee shop before hitting the road officially. This time we went to a place called Rise Coffee.  I would love to come back here some day. It had such a cool vibe, great raspberry bars and wonderful honey lattes.

I had already kind of thought this, especially after my layover adventure there in April, but St Louis is casually amazing. I love experiencing some of the gems this city has to offer.