Lanterns

A special treat awaited Nana last night. After we “arched” in St. Louis, I had arranged for us to go to around sunset. Now before this we had been to the Gateway Arch. We actually disembarked our bikes and road around the Jefferson Expansion Memorial and along the Mississippi River before climbing into what seemed like a tiny space capsule for the unusual elevator ride up one leg of the arch. After pedaling back to the car we had to wind our way through the hoards of people downtown for a ball game at Busch Stadium. But after being misled by our nav system we finally made it to another hoard of people clogging the entrance to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Now I would have wanted to go there under most any circumstances but with the sun setting you would think that the crowds or myself would be very interested in walking around in the dark. Well, for a limited time you would not be staring at plants through the gloom but would be illuminated by the imported from China Lantern Festival. There were 26 major displays of colorfully illuminated displays based on traditional designs and legends that were like an awesome combination of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade character balloons and that neighbor across town with the 500,000 light Christmas display. Look at all the pictures on the Roadtrip page in addition to this one. It was truly memorable on many levels. The moving, smoke breathing dragons, Jiang Tai going fishing, flying Asparas, lots of blue hair with layers of Chanel number 5, 6 or 8 and Shalimar, groups of my elders deciding that the 3 foot wide walkway was a great place to catch up on how those stitches were healing, blasts of flashes that if they actually did their job would wash out the colors, and bodies, large and small, pressing together in the syrupy-humid heat of the day. OK, the latter didn’t really matter that much. The Lotus Pond lanterns alone made it all worthwhile.