It is December! And we are home from our travels -- and the twins are back in school, so I have some time to decompress and think about what to do next. We had a wonderful time in St. Louis, visiting Rocket Boy. Here are some highlights.
We flew to St. Louis last Sunday (the 24th), arriving at about 4:30 in the afternoon. The day went very smoothly -- caught the bus to the airport with no problem, plenty of time at the airport, got three seats together on the plane, perfectly smooth ride (Kid B said it felt like he was in a car), and Rocket Boy there to meet us at the other end. We had rented an Airbnb because RB just lives in a basement, so we went there to drop off our luggage and in the refrigerator we found this surprise! Rocket Boy had bought it and brought it to the Airbnb just before he picked us up. We ate it for several nights.
Rocket Boy had gotten us tickets to ride on St. Louis's newest
Ferris wheel, this monster down by the old Union Station. The wheel is 200 feet tall. What terrified me was learning that the first Ferris wheel ever built, which turned at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and later at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, was 264 feet tall (and of course didn't have nice safe enclosed compartments like this one). RB and I enjoyed the ride, but the twins were scared. Afterwards we had a delicious dinner at Landry's Seafood House. I had fabulously wonderful swordfish and Rocket Boy had seafood pasta. Pricey, but worth it.
Monday morning RB had to work, so the twins and I took a Lyft to the
St. Louis Zoo. (The plan was that RB would pick us up there after work, around 2 pm.) Taking the Lyft was unexpectedly exciting. I didn't download the app until that morning, wasn't familiar with it at all, and when I started to order our ride, we weren't quite ready to go. The app asked me whether we wanted to go now or later and I chose "now." The app then informed me that my ride would be there in 3 minutes. "Ack! Three minutes!" We went tearing around the apartment, putting on shoes, grabbing water bottles, etc. Once outside, we had to find the address where it would pick us up. It was very close, but I wasn't familiar with the house numbers yet. We raced one way, then turned around and raced the other. Meanwhile, a black car showed up and parked across the street. "Maybe that's our Lyft," Kid B said, but I didn't see a Lyft sticker. The app sent me a message: "Your ride will depart in 3 minutes." "Ack! Our ride is leaving!" Fortunately, the driver of the black car then called me and told me where she was, and so we hurried across the street and were off to the zoo at Forest Park.
We enjoyed the zoo, especially the penguins and the lemurs. One amazing thing about the zoo is that it's FREE, so I spent more money there on souvenirs and food and donations than I might otherwise have done. There was a Starbucks in the park, so we had "lunch" from there (the twins adore Starbucks). After a few hours we were tired of walking, so we sat at a picnic table outside the Primate House and ate the M&Ms I had bought for the plane. It was a beautiful day and we were on a hill near a lot of trees, so I started looking for birds. I am not much of a birder anymore, but there were two birds I really wanted to see in St. Louis: a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, which is found nowhere else in the U.S. (it's an import from Germany), and a Northern Cardinal, because Rocket Boy said he hadn't seen one in a long time and they had probably migrated. "No, they don't migrate," I said, and then had to prove it. While we sat at the table I looked up and saw a cardinal fly by! I tried to find it again, but no luck.
Around 2:30 we decided to exit the zoo and wait for Rocket Boy outside. I called him to see when he might be coming. "We have a problem," he said, sounding very unhappy. "My car won't start." Remember that Rocket Boy is driving his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero, which is 28 years old. It has a lot of problems: windows that don't go back up if you roll them down, doors that don't open from the outside (Kid B's) or the inside (mine). But it had a new battery. "It's not the battery, it's the switch," RB told me. "I can usually start it in neutral, but not today." We decided that he would call Enterprise ("we'll pick you up"), get a rental car, and then come get us. In the meantime, the kids and I would start walking to the
Science Center, another amazing free thing in Forest Park, and we would all meet up there. So we started walking. Unfortunately it is a mile and a half from the south entrance of the zoo to the north entrance of the Science Center, and we had already been walking around the zoo for four hours. Plus, I'm developing plantar fasciitis again, so I was in a lot of pain. Partway along our walk I called RB to learn that the Enterprise driver had been given the wrong directions and was now stuck in traffic on the opposite side of the city. Obviously we were not going to be rescued any time soon. The twins and I walked on, Kid A begging me to call another Lyft. By the time we got to the Planetarium (the north side of the Science Center), I was in bad shape. I sat on a bench and watched the twins play while we waited. The Science Center closed at 4:30 pm, and then we waited outside on a bench as it got cooler and darker. I think Rocket Boy finally showed up around 5 pm.
We had tickets to see "Garden Glow" at the
Missouri Botanical Garden at 5 pm, so we needed to rush over there, but St. Louis rush hour traffic interfered with that plan. We finally got there around 5:30, and they let us in. We decided to eat dinner at the restaurant first, which was a good plan. I had a spicy tuna melt, the kids had quesadillas, RB had quiche. Then we set out to walk through the "Glow." The Garden is Rocket Boy's favorite thing in St. Louis and I was sorry we weren't seeing it in daylight, but even in the dark it seemed lovely. I started thinking we should go back to St. Louis in the spring, perhaps May, to see what it's like then.
Tuesday morning, the twins and I took another Lyft to the
City Museum, an amazing place for kids to play -- not really a museum at all. It's on several floors of an old industrial building (I think maybe a shoe factory?) and also outside and on the roof (but the roof is closed until May, another reason to go back then). There are slides and things to climb on all over the building -- pictures don't do it justice, the place is nuts! It was supposed to rain all day, but the rain held off until around 2 pm, which meant the kids could play on the stuff outdoors off and on until then. Another piece of luck was that the museum is not usually open on Tuesdays and the fact that it was open on the 26th was very poorly advertised, so there weren't very many people there (also, I believe school was still in session in St. Louis). The kids wore themselves out playing. We were there for six hours.
Once again, Rocket Boy was delayed in picking us up because of his car. He had left it in the parking lot at work the day before, so after work he needed to get it towed to a garage and this time, although the driver had the right address, AAA sent a battery-charging truck instead of a tow truck, so he had to wait for another truck. Fortunately, the garage was near the Enterprise car rental, so it would be easy to return the rental car later. When he finally came and got us, he took us to his basement, which we had been very eager to see. It's a very nice basement, furnished with a mixture of things left by previous tenants and things he's found on craigslist. He had all the greeting cards he'd received since moving -- for Father's Day, our anniversary, his birthday, Halloween -- displayed around the room. The kids immediately asked if they could sleep there one night, so we arranged that Kid A would spend Tuesday night on the couch (and be dropped off at the Airbnb on RB's way to work) and Kid B would spend Wednesday night. We ate dinner at a wonderful little greasy spoon nearby called the Buttery -- very cheap, cash only.
Wednesday, Rocket Boy was due to get off work three hours early because of the holiday the next day (he took two hours leave both Monday and Tuesday), so we planned that we would go to the Gateway Arch with him then. The last two days had been so busy -- and it was so cold that day -- that we just stayed in the Airbnb until he arrived, which was later than planned because of the car again. The good news was that the Montero had been successfully fixed (it was the starter, not the switch), so he was driving it again. We drove to the Arch, which is actually part of a
National Park, parked on a side street, and walked over to the entrance. I hadn't realized that you can ride a tram up to the top of the 630-foot arch, but we gamely did it, and it was very interesting. It was a bit terrifying to think about how high up we were and how the trams were over 50 years old, but at least they weren't 80 years old (Rocket Boy first guessed that the Arch had been built in the 1930s). There's a good museum connected to the Arch (underground), and a large gift shop. We were there too late to tour the old courthouse which is also part of the park, but that would have been interesting too. For dinner, we drove to a Bob Evans south of the city -- it's a chain, of course, but a chain that RB and the kids had never been to, and the food was good.
Thursday, Rocket Boy FINALLY didn't have to work, but of course nothing was open, it being Thanksgiving. So we tentatively decided that it would be nature day. I was still hoping to see that Eurasian Tree Sparrow and find more Northern Cardinals, plus I thought a hike in a county park would be pleasant (the twins thought that was a terrible idea). It was a pretty gloomy day, though, with rain threatening (and eventually falling intermittently). Rocket Boy also wanted to show us the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, so we attempted to do that. Crossing over a bridge to the Illinois side of the river we found the
Lewis & Clark Confluence Tower... but of course it was closed, although we were able to walk around the grounds and read the interpretive signs. Something else to do in May! We never did manage to see where the rivers come together -- probably should have researched it better. Another thing we did find, while wandering around a swampy area near the bridge was a cardinal! Several cardinals, in fact! Rocket Boy was very impressed.
Later in the day RB drove us to a wonderful outdoor
sculpture garden. Even though it was raining again, we wandered through it for quite a while (the kids mostly stayed in the car). Definitely a place to go back to in May. There were a lot of birds around, and I looked and looked for those Eurasian Tree Sparrows, but didn't see any. However, my lack of binoculars may have been a factor. I did see lots more cardinals! so that was fun.
After the sculpture garden we went back to the Airbnb to crash, and finally it was time for our Thanksgiving dinner, which we had made reservations to eat at the
City Diner -- a place that apparently used to be really great but is now under new management and has fallen on hard times. We hadn't needed the reservations -- the place was about 2/3 empty at 5:30 pm. "Sit anywhere you like," the waitress told us, so we eventually found a booth that didn't have torn-up seats. Then she brought us these gigantic platters of food. The food wasn't bad, but there was so much of it. I ate my stuffing and mashed potatoes, sampled the other items on my plate, and felt sick. Kid A ate so little you couldn't tell his plate had been touched. Kid B knocked over his pink lemonade (you can see it in the picture, in the tall red glass) and most of it landed on me. Including tax and tip, I paid just over $100 for that dinner, our worst of the trip. But we went back to the Airbnb (Rocket Boy stayed with us the last night) and laughed about it, and it became a funny story to remember.
Friday, our last day in St. Louis, we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the Airbnb, and drove back to the Science Center, where we hung out until it was time to go to the airport. One thing that really struck me about St. Louis was the black/white segregation. St. Louis has more black people (49.2% of the population) than white people (43.9%), but I saw very few black people enjoying the attractions we visited. I saw black people working at menial jobs, I saw them huddled near abandoned buildings. We did go to one grocery store where almost all the shoppers were black. But mostly we just saw white people, even though many of the places we went to were free, intended for everyone in the city to use. Why does it have to be like that? The Civil War was over 150 years ago. I did see a few more black people at the Science Center that last day, but not 49.2%. I know I sound naive and I don't know what to do about it. But it seemed so very wrong.
Rocket Boy came with us into the airport and watched and waved until we disappeared into Security. I was so sad to say goodbye. Our flight left late because of bad weather in Denver, and it was an extremely bumpy ride. We got to Denver around 6 pm and caught the 7:20 bus to Boulder. That was also a hair-raising ride, because it was foggy and the roads weren't completely clear. I knew Boulder had gotten 22 inches of snow on Monday/Tuesday, but I still wasn't prepared for the mess at home. It's going to take forever for all this snow to melt. Fortunately, our neighbors had cleared our sidewalk as well as a path to the house, and our cat-sitters had been able to get over and keep the cats alive. We dragged our suitcases through the snow -- and we were home. It was a wonderful trip, but I'm so glad to be back in my cozy little house again. Rocket Boy will be back in less than three weeks! and on we go.
We flew to St. Louis last Sunday (the 24th), arriving at about 4:30 in the afternoon. The day went very smoothly -- caught the bus to the airport with no problem, plenty of time at the airport, got three seats together on the plane, perfectly smooth ride (Kid B said it felt like he was in a car), and Rocket Boy there to meet us at the other end. We had rented an Airbnb because RB just lives in a basement, so we went there to drop off our luggage and in the refrigerator we found this surprise! Rocket Boy had bought it and brought it to the Airbnb just before he picked us up. We ate it for several nights.
Rocket Boy had gotten us tickets to ride on St. Louis's newest Ferris wheel, this monster down by the old Union Station. The wheel is 200 feet tall. What terrified me was learning that the first Ferris wheel ever built, which turned at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and later at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, was 264 feet tall (and of course didn't have nice safe enclosed compartments like this one). RB and I enjoyed the ride, but the twins were scared. Afterwards we had a delicious dinner at Landry's Seafood House. I had fabulously wonderful swordfish and Rocket Boy had seafood pasta. Pricey, but worth it.
Monday morning RB had to work, so the twins and I took a Lyft to the St. Louis Zoo. (The plan was that RB would pick us up there after work, around 2 pm.) Taking the Lyft was unexpectedly exciting. I didn't download the app until that morning, wasn't familiar with it at all, and when I started to order our ride, we weren't quite ready to go. The app asked me whether we wanted to go now or later and I chose "now." The app then informed me that my ride would be there in 3 minutes. "Ack! Three minutes!" We went tearing around the apartment, putting on shoes, grabbing water bottles, etc. Once outside, we had to find the address where it would pick us up. It was very close, but I wasn't familiar with the house numbers yet. We raced one way, then turned around and raced the other. Meanwhile, a black car showed up and parked across the street. "Maybe that's our Lyft," Kid B said, but I didn't see a Lyft sticker. The app sent me a message: "Your ride will depart in 3 minutes." "Ack! Our ride is leaving!" Fortunately, the driver of the black car then called me and told me where she was, and so we hurried across the street and were off to the zoo at Forest Park.
Around 2:30 we decided to exit the zoo and wait for Rocket Boy outside. I called him to see when he might be coming. "We have a problem," he said, sounding very unhappy. "My car won't start." Remember that Rocket Boy is driving his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero, which is 28 years old. It has a lot of problems: windows that don't go back up if you roll them down, doors that don't open from the outside (Kid B's) or the inside (mine). But it had a new battery. "It's not the battery, it's the switch," RB told me. "I can usually start it in neutral, but not today." We decided that he would call Enterprise ("we'll pick you up"), get a rental car, and then come get us. In the meantime, the kids and I would start walking to the Science Center, another amazing free thing in Forest Park, and we would all meet up there. So we started walking. Unfortunately it is a mile and a half from the south entrance of the zoo to the north entrance of the Science Center, and we had already been walking around the zoo for four hours. Plus, I'm developing plantar fasciitis again, so I was in a lot of pain. Partway along our walk I called RB to learn that the Enterprise driver had been given the wrong directions and was now stuck in traffic on the opposite side of the city. Obviously we were not going to be rescued any time soon. The twins and I walked on, Kid A begging me to call another Lyft. By the time we got to the Planetarium (the north side of the Science Center), I was in bad shape. I sat on a bench and watched the twins play while we waited. The Science Center closed at 4:30 pm, and then we waited outside on a bench as it got cooler and darker. I think Rocket Boy finally showed up around 5 pm.
We had tickets to see "Garden Glow" at the Missouri Botanical Garden at 5 pm, so we needed to rush over there, but St. Louis rush hour traffic interfered with that plan. We finally got there around 5:30, and they let us in. We decided to eat dinner at the restaurant first, which was a good plan. I had a spicy tuna melt, the kids had quesadillas, RB had quiche. Then we set out to walk through the "Glow." The Garden is Rocket Boy's favorite thing in St. Louis and I was sorry we weren't seeing it in daylight, but even in the dark it seemed lovely. I started thinking we should go back to St. Louis in the spring, perhaps May, to see what it's like then.
Tuesday morning, the twins and I took another Lyft to the City Museum, an amazing place for kids to play -- not really a museum at all. It's on several floors of an old industrial building (I think maybe a shoe factory?) and also outside and on the roof (but the roof is closed until May, another reason to go back then). There are slides and things to climb on all over the building -- pictures don't do it justice, the place is nuts! It was supposed to rain all day, but the rain held off until around 2 pm, which meant the kids could play on the stuff outdoors off and on until then. Another piece of luck was that the museum is not usually open on Tuesdays and the fact that it was open on the 26th was very poorly advertised, so there weren't very many people there (also, I believe school was still in session in St. Louis). The kids wore themselves out playing. We were there for six hours.
Once again, Rocket Boy was delayed in picking us up because of his car. He had left it in the parking lot at work the day before, so after work he needed to get it towed to a garage and this time, although the driver had the right address, AAA sent a battery-charging truck instead of a tow truck, so he had to wait for another truck. Fortunately, the garage was near the Enterprise car rental, so it would be easy to return the rental car later. When he finally came and got us, he took us to his basement, which we had been very eager to see. It's a very nice basement, furnished with a mixture of things left by previous tenants and things he's found on craigslist. He had all the greeting cards he'd received since moving -- for Father's Day, our anniversary, his birthday, Halloween -- displayed around the room. The kids immediately asked if they could sleep there one night, so we arranged that Kid A would spend Tuesday night on the couch (and be dropped off at the Airbnb on RB's way to work) and Kid B would spend Wednesday night. We ate dinner at a wonderful little greasy spoon nearby called the Buttery -- very cheap, cash only. 
Wednesday, Rocket Boy was due to get off work three hours early because of the holiday the next day (he took two hours leave both Monday and Tuesday), so we planned that we would go to the Gateway Arch with him then. The last two days had been so busy -- and it was so cold that day -- that we just stayed in the Airbnb until he arrived, which was later than planned because of the car again. The good news was that the Montero had been successfully fixed (it was the starter, not the switch), so he was driving it again. We drove to the Arch, which is actually part of a National Park, parked on a side street, and walked over to the entrance. I hadn't realized that you can ride a tram up to the top of the 630-foot arch, but we gamely did it, and it was very interesting. It was a bit terrifying to think about how high up we were and how the trams were over 50 years old, but at least they weren't 80 years old (Rocket Boy first guessed that the Arch had been built in the 1930s). There's a good museum connected to the Arch (underground), and a large gift shop. We were there too late to tour the old courthouse which is also part of the park, but that would have been interesting too. For dinner, we drove to a Bob Evans south of the city -- it's a chain, of course, but a chain that RB and the kids had never been to, and the food was good. 
Thursday, Rocket Boy FINALLY didn't have to work, but of course nothing was open, it being Thanksgiving. So we tentatively decided that it would be nature day. I was still hoping to see that Eurasian Tree Sparrow and find more Northern Cardinals, plus I thought a hike in a county park would be pleasant (the twins thought that was a terrible idea). It was a pretty gloomy day, though, with rain threatening (and eventually falling intermittently). Rocket Boy also wanted to show us the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, so we attempted to do that. Crossing over a bridge to the Illinois side of the river we found the Lewis & Clark Confluence Tower... but of course it was closed, although we were able to walk around the grounds and read the interpretive signs. Something else to do in May! We never did manage to see where the rivers come together -- probably should have researched it better. Another thing we did find, while wandering around a swampy area near the bridge was a cardinal! Several cardinals, in fact! Rocket Boy was very impressed.
Later in the day RB drove us to a wonderful outdoor sculpture garden. Even though it was raining again, we wandered through it for quite a while (the kids mostly stayed in the car). Definitely a place to go back to in May. There were a lot of birds around, and I looked and looked for those Eurasian Tree Sparrows, but didn't see any. However, my lack of binoculars may have been a factor. I did see lots more cardinals! so that was fun.
After the sculpture garden we went back to the Airbnb to crash, and finally it was time for our Thanksgiving dinner, which we had made reservations to eat at the City Diner -- a place that apparently used to be really great but is now under new management and has fallen on hard times. We hadn't needed the reservations -- the place was about 2/3 empty at 5:30 pm. "Sit anywhere you like," the waitress told us, so we eventually found a booth that didn't have torn-up seats. Then she brought us these gigantic platters of food. The food wasn't bad, but there was so much of it. I ate my stuffing and mashed potatoes, sampled the other items on my plate, and felt sick. Kid A ate so little you couldn't tell his plate had been touched. Kid B knocked over his pink lemonade (you can see it in the picture, in the tall red glass) and most of it landed on me. Including tax and tip, I paid just over $100 for that dinner, our worst of the trip. But we went back to the Airbnb (Rocket Boy stayed with us the last night) and laughed about it, and it became a funny story to remember.
Friday, our last day in St. Louis, we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the Airbnb, and drove back to the Science Center, where we hung out until it was time to go to the airport. One thing that really struck me about St. Louis was the black/white segregation. St. Louis has more black people (49.2% of the population) than white people (43.9%), but I saw very few black people enjoying the attractions we visited. I saw black people working at menial jobs, I saw them huddled near abandoned buildings. We did go to one grocery store where almost all the shoppers were black. But mostly we just saw white people, even though many of the places we went to were free, intended for everyone in the city to use. Why does it have to be like that? The Civil War was over 150 years ago. I did see a few more black people at the Science Center that last day, but not 49.2%. I know I sound naive and I don't know what to do about it. But it seemed so very wrong.
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