Sonya's Blog

Sonya’s Blog - Day 17 - July 9th - Day 2 of Exploring St. Louis

The wifi is being super slow, so I am going to post this and put my pictures on my last 3 days later.

Well today was a very busy day. We made it to downtown St. Louis by 9:45 or so. Blake and the kids went straight into City Museum and I walked Kizmet up the few blocks to the Doggy Daycare. This would give the kids a chance to explore the rooftop exhibits first and I didn’t really want to take part in that. Kizmet was excited to go into the Doggy Daycare building, but she wanted to leave with me as well:) Then I went to join everyone at City Museum, here is a picture of the roof:

It is not really a museum, in the traditional sense. There is artwork in there, but it is made to be touched, played on and explored. It is like a huge art park. The guy that created it had amazing vision and the kids that get to experience it are hugely grateful. So many tunnels, slides and quirky little nooks and crannies. Great mosaics, banisters and staircases. It is something to see, although very noisy and busy. I was glad we went early because by the time we left it was a little crazy in there. Here are some pictures:

When we were hungry we headed out to The Dubliner on Washington Street for some pub food and their Guinness cake (served in a Guinness glass with whip cream, on it’s side to look like spilled Guinness with the foam). It was a good lunch and the cake was fantastic

The Dubliner is in this old Hat Factory Building. Steam would come out of the lion's heads when they were making hats back in the day:

After lunch we headed to the Federal Reserve. We passed inspection and were allowed to go in for the tour, which is absolutely free! It was pretty interesting and they had lots of interactive things to do related to money and thinking about money. They also talked about how new money is put into the system and sorting money to shred. Our favourite was the buying and selling of stocks and trying to make a profit, we played against each other with 2 of us being buyers and 2 of us being sellers. At the end of the tour the kids got a free bag of money, shredded beyond recognition. It was worth the trip over there.

We then headed to the St. Louis Arch. The kids and Blake bought tickets to travel to the top of the arch, I opted to stay below and check out the museum there. I saw a short film on the building of the arch, which was done in the 60’s. It was crazy to see the guys out on the platform, hundred of stories in air, with no safety harnesses on or any safety equipment at all. They were just standing up there installing section after section of the arch. In the end there were no injuries or deaths, so they must have been careful enough or really lucky. It is a massive monument to celebrate Jefferson and to act as a gateway to the west.

St. Louis Arch:

We moseyed on over to Busch Stadium afterwards. The Cardinals were playing The Pirates, but not in St. Louis unfortunately. Blake is having no luck trying to see a baseball game. Kansas was rained out, St. Louis is not at home the whole time we are here, the Cubs are away while we are in Chicago. Just no luck. However, they have a massive screen and you can go in and watch the away games. I guess the Pirates and Cardinals are the two best teams in the league right now. It was all going well, with the Pirates playing a little better. Then The Cardinals pitcher found his mojo and started throwing some awesome pitches. By this time it is just pouring in Pittsburgh and they finally called the game in the 5th inning for a rain break. So we packed up and went on our way. We were going to head over to BB Kings, but it was too late so we decided to get the Kiz Kiz and call it a night. On the walk back we walked through the war memorial and the Central Library (an amazing building). Then a few blocks from Kizmet we saw a car chase. A guy in a black car was just roaring down the street being chased by 4 police cars with sirens a blaring. They went zooming past us and one of the police cars turned off to try and head him off from another street. Then we went another block and another police car finally joined in and we thought he was like the fat rhino in Jumanji, just a little late on the uptake.

Kizmet was very happy to see us, but had a fantastic day and played a ton. She even ate her food, so she must have felt comfortable enough to do that, because she won’t eat if she is upset. She was jumping up and down and being a little crazy when we got her, but as soon as she was in the truck she put her head on my lap and fell asleep.

We are all pretty exhausted and ready for bed after our busy day.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Sonya