Unfortunately the mists of time have rather made me forget much of this visit to St. Louis Zoo from two years ago, but judging by the number of photos I clearly had a marvellous time. I do recall it not being particularly busy during my visit in January 2017, but it was a clean environment.
Anyway, what do exist are a lot of photos, and here are some of them…..
Between my visits to St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri History museum I decided that an interesting food option was the Boathouse restaurant. The zoo, museum and restaurant, amongst much else, are all located within the Forest Park which is towards the west of the city.
Visiting in January inevitably meant that there wasn’t a chance to sit outside in the warm gazing over the lake, but instead it meant sitting inside near to the fire.
And here is the wood burning fire….
The food was fish and chips, and as usual the Americans do this rather well. The meal is, or at least was since I was there back in 2017, one of the specialities of the restaurant and although the presentation isn’t particularly noteworthy, it tasted of a decent quality. There was a crispiness to the batter and the portion size of tartare sauce was sufficiently generous.
The reviews of this location on-line are a bit mixed, although it’s towards the better end of reviews overall for the city, but it was a warm and comfortable place to stay for a while. Service was attentive and polite, with the restaurant being busier than I had expected in January.
Located just to the north of Birżebbuġa is this prehistoric cave which is where the first evidence of human life on Malta is recorded, dating back nearly 7,500 years.
The skeleton of a brown bear, one of the many animals which died in the cave.
Part of the museum collection of the bones and other remains which were found at the site. There is a real focus on quantity, which isn’t unusual for the time, rather than displaying the most important pieces, but it looks quite impressive when entering the room.
The museum has rather started to heap things up now, although I doubt that these displays have changed much in many years. I quite like the heritage of the displays in many ways, although the museum does perhaps need a little bit of an update.
When they excavated the caves they found a series of different layers of bones and detritus, this is the deer bone layer dating to the period of 13,000 to 18,000 years ago.
After the museum visit is the walk down to the cave, which I managed to time beautifully between two school groups. It’s very lovely that school groups come to look at historic sites, but I prefer them to do it just before I arrive and just after I leave.
Views of the countryside whilst walking down to the caves.
The entrance to the caves, fenced off to prevent vandalism which has unfortunately been a problem at this site in the past.
An example of the different layers which were found at the site.
The walkway, looking back towards the entrance.
Views inside the cave.
Visitors are limited as to how far they can go in case they stand on a woodlouse.
This is the hippopotamus layer and these were on the islands until around 10,000 years ago. There’s also evidence of dwarf elephants which are when larger animals become smaller when in a confined area, such as Malta, because there wouldn’t otherwise be enough food available for them.
Overall, a fascinating site, although more information panels at the site might have been useful to ascertain exactly what some features were. I had my Heritage Malta pass, but the entrance was only a few euros, worth it to imagine humans occupying these caves so many thousands of years ago.
Dating to 1948, this car was produced by Lancia and was designed with the assistance of a wind tunnel. The car was made between 1937 and 1949, so this is one of the later versions of the model. Lancia was later taken over by Fiat and I note that in an auction a car similar to this was listed at over £30,000. That seems a lot of money to me for an old car, but then again I’m not a car collector.
I was fortunate to be able to take a photo of this without people in front of it, it’s a popular location for people to take photos of themselves and friends. It’s a 3D sculpture by the French sculptor Marc Didou and it does stand out in its location near the Palazzo Nuovo.
It’s many years since Fatso’s left Norwich city centre, when they closed their Prince of Wales Road location. This was then turned into Lost, a nightclub, and then more recently it has become Popworld, not somewhere that I am particularly engaged with….
Anyway, the chain is back in the city, on the site that was previously Artorio’s, although I think that the owners are the same. I might visit at some point when it opens, just to check if it’s as I remember….
I was at first slightly confused when the BA app told me that my flight would be 21 minutes late departing and 92 minutes late arriving into Gatwick South. It transpired when we boarded that this information was correct, the inbound flight had been delayed by bad weather at Gatwick and we had now missed our slot in Turin. Fortunately the delay wasn’t quite that bad in the end and the pilots were good at keeping customers informed.
The Club Europe cabin stretched back six rows, although there were only five customers in those seats. The main cabin was relatively busy, but by no means packed. I went for my usual afternoon drink of Gin and Tonic.
I was a little disappointed by the food, not because of what I was served, but because I saw what other customers thought of it. I thought that the salmon on quinoa was excellent, with a depth of taste, fresh flavours and it was nicely presented.
However, one customer rejected it and wanted a sandwich and another asked where the toasties had gone. Toasties? This isn’t what I’d personally want on a flight, it’s stodgy and uninventive in my view and I’m glad BA got rid of it last year.
The service was polite and efficient, although the cabin manager did get caught talking to a customer for quite a while and even I could sense other customers wanting another drink.
The flight made up a little bit of time en route, so what looked like it could be a delay of a couple of hours got halved. All in all I thought this was another well managed flight. Unfortunately, after a run of Club Europe flights, I’m back in economy for my next few excursions with BA so I will no longer be able to praise the improved Club Europe catering arrangements.
This car was on display at Turin’s National Automobile Museum and was interesting in itself to see how the air bags had deployed and how the car was damaged. It was also surprising (to me anyway) as the car, which had an open window, still had that new car smell.
There’s only airport lounge at Turin Airport which is used by lounge access companies such as Priority Pass, as well as by the national airlines for their customers. It’s also well signed and so isn’t difficult to find.
Views over the runway and the environment in the lounge is clean and pleasant.
I was initially pleased at just how many power points there were across the lounge. Until I realised that these really aren’t well designed for anyone who wants to use an adaptor, as it won’t fit because of that extruding element on the left. So my devices went uncharged because of a design which I must admit I’ve never seen before.
The lounge has picked up more than a few complaints about the quality of the food options, although that might be a little unfair. There was plenty of choice including pastries, pizza and fruit, with the quality all seeming reasonable. There were yoghurts with no spoons available, but otherwise the selection was well presented and looked appetising.
For reasons unknown, the lounge doesn’t have any self-pour drinks and customers have to ask even for glasses of water. I’m unsure of the logic behind not having soft drinks at least on self-pour rather than add this extra layer of complexity. I noticed many lounge visitors didn’t have a drink, either because they didn’t like to ask, or because they didn’t know that they had to.
I’m also not convinced that these signs on the toilets are sufficiently clear and I watched other people being just a little bemused by this. These are the male toilets for the avoidance of any doubt.
Overall, the lounge was clean, the staff were friendly and the food and drink options were adequate. The lack of access to power was more irritating than anything else given the effort they’d made in terms of the number of power points, and ideally I’d have been able to pour my own water and soft drinks. However, it’s a comfortable and quiet place to visit and the views over the tarmac are extensive.
I haven’t been very impressed with the public transport in Turin and the unnecessarily complex way that buying tickets works. However, I noted that I could get a €5 fare from the city centre to Turin airport if I used my Torino + Piemonte card.
I still don’t think having a ticket purchasing system which requires people to go to bars is ideal, but anyway, it’s signed at least.
But, those with the card can buy their ticket on the bus without a surcharge. This seemed quite advanced compared to the other forms of ticket purchasing I’ve seen in Turin, and I wondered how they knew my 72-hour card was still valid.
My wondering was solved when it transpired that I could have presented any card, the driver couldn’t tell if it was out of date or not. He was very helpful though, although he had to phone a colleague and then find some paper receipts in order to process my transaction as he said he didn’t know how to deal with the card. It seemed unduly fiddly, but the driver remained helpful, even though this caused a delay to the bus journey of five minutes which I was a little conscious of.
I have since discovered that until recently it was possible to buy tickets for this bus service on-line, but that facility has been withdrawn. I hope that they put it back soon, or just let people pay for the journey on the bus itself without this surcharge issue.
Anyway, the bus got to the airport on time and for the price that I had hoped to pay. The driver was friendly, the bus was clean and everything else ran smoothly, so other than the ticket purchasing everything went well. The usual rate for this bus journey is €6.50 and realistically, it’s necessary to use cash to get this as paying by card is challenging.
