St. Louis

For spring break this year we took a quick overnight trip to St. Louis to check out the sights.  We rolled out of bed at 5 am and kept sleeping in the car while good ole Brian drove us to St. Louis.  We got there by 9 am local time!  It rained lightly on and off but nothing our umbrellas couldn't handle.  
  Lots of things in St. Louis are free, but we had never heard of the Federal Reserve Museum before.  We were intrigued enough by the sign when we walked by to go check it out and I have to say it was pretty cool!  It's very hands on and high tech and located in the beautiful 1920's era Federal Reserve building.  The museum is only a few months old and we had the place to ourselves.  I loved teaching the kids about economics, the stock market and money!  I'm a business school gal at heart.  Plus, you leave with free bags of shredded money.  Bonus! 
 Next we headed to the free zoo!  Free!  And it wasn't sad and gross.  In fact, it might be one of my favorite zoos I've been to.  The animals seemed happy and well cared for (except the elephants - they still looked sad to me.)  But at any rate - the animals were active and so visible.  It was great!
 We all loved the butterfly room.  It's hard to see them on camera but they were everywhere!  It's hard to not be happy in a sunny room full of butterflies.  
 

 
 We headed up the arch later in the day to avoid the school group crowds.  This is something Grant has talked about doing since we drove through 3 years ago.  We stopped to look at the arch on a trip west but didn't have the time/money to go up and Grant has never let us forget!  
 Well, his long awaited dreams finally came true!


I was nervous about the little cars you ride up in because me and tight spaces don't get along - but I had no problems at all.  The windows on the door made all the difference.  It was cool to look around on the inside on the trip up and down.  


 The view from the top was cool.  Here's the Mississippi side:
 And the downtown side:


After watching the movie on how it was made I am in awe.  Those guys weren't even wearing harnesses and were doing some crazy jobs hundreds of feet in the air!  It's amazing to me that nobody died making the arch (I googled it!) 

We walked over to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner.  I love that place.  Especially because that is where Brian and I went for a date after not seeing each other for 3 years in SLC.  We walked in friends and walked out 3 hours later having found our sole mates!  It was the most magical night of my life.  So now our kids have to always eat there and hear their parent's mushy stories.  Haha.  

Comments

Jennifer's Kitchen said…
You found some cool stuff in St. Louis that I didn't even know existed. That's so fun. We did the Arch last summer on our move from NY to CO and it was AWESOME!! We loved it!!
April 13, 2015 at 2:46 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science Center & Niagara Falls

Image
Brian took this picture of a bridge competition that was going on at the conference center.  That is a lot of bridge players! While Brian was conferencing, we ventured out in our car to the Science Center across town.  It was awesome!  We loved the interactive displays and things to do.  It was way, way fun. This frog is the cutest, saddest, frog I've ever seen.  He was so adorable. Haley loves turtles! We tried some Pizza Pizza for lunch in the cafeteria.  Not bad! This wooden slide was awesome in their little forest.  Grant went flying down it like a rocket.  Once he didn't get his footing right to stop and he kept on flying.  It was sooo funny.  He had a little bum rash from the slide, but was okay. What a good sister...picking out the mulch from Grant's shorts after he went flying off the slide.  hahaha. After finding so many good deals at the outdoorsy place the night before, I decided we ne...
Read more

Aquarium & CN Tower

Image
The next morning, we walked over to the Aquarium and beat the crowds.  It was a really cool aquarium - better than we expected.   Our favorite part was the tube that you could walk through.  This big sea creature was just sitting on the top of the tube.  It was so cool to check him out and to see all the sharks everywhere.  You really get a good look at all their crazy shark teeth when you are below them!   After lunch, we headed for an afternoon swim at the hotel pool. Then we headed over to St. Lawrence Market and met Brian for dinner.  I got fish and chips, Grant got homemade ravioli, Haley got chinese and Brian got perogies.  Everyone was happy!  It was fun to walk around the market. Next, we headed over the CN tower as a family.  It's a very high way up! The glass floor was super crazy to walk on.  It made me so nervous!  Man, that is a long way down! ...
Read more

Dearborn, Michigan

Image
On our way to another conference in Toronto, we stopped over outside of Detroit in Dearborn, Michigan - where the Ford headquarters are.  We stayed at the historic Dearborn Inn, which Henry Ford designed, and is now managed by Marriott, and went to the Henry Ford Museum.   There are tons of Ford factories, offices, test tracks and museums all over...but man, do they need to pave their roads!  They were full of potholes everywhere.  Poor Detroit/Dearborn.  Hopefully they can pave someday soon.   Brian and I had been to the museum before, but it has been over 20 years for me...and they had changed quite a bit.  It was fun to walk around and look at all of the neat cars, trains, airplanes and other equipment.    This is the original oscar myer hotdog mobile.   This is the actual bus - not a replica - of the bus in Montgomery Alabama where Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus.  Grant is sitting in her ...
Read more