City Museum

Day 2 in St. Louis started delightfully lazy. We all went to bed at a decent time and "slept in" until 8:30--wow! After enjoying our complimentary hot breakfast (Z and S brought their cereal down), we set off for City Museum, which was probably the highlight of our trip.

City Museum is a funky, crazy maze of reclaimed items from the city of St. Louis. Outside, there are probably a thousand feet of wire, rebar and old steel bent into impossible tunnels, steps, slides and the like. There are two old airplanes that you can climb up to in a wire-enclosed tube. It's truly an engineering marvel. There are two gigantic ball pits as well (Seth lost his shoe for a while in one). Tunnels and walkways widen and narrow, but always stay safe (unlike, say, Bishop's Castle!) The designs are whimsical, and almost seem Dr. Seuss inspired. Needless to say, the boys (and we) had a marvelous time climbing around.

Inside, there are beautiful mosaics (also from reclaimed items, I suppose) covering the floors and the walls. Serpents, chameleons, fish...it's all there. There was a slide from the second to the first floor in case you didn't want to go down the stairs. We explored all three floors and decided to grab lunch before we attended the circus (yes, circus!) at 1 pm.

The circus is on the 3rd floor of the museum. It's actually a circus arts school for children and adults. I wasn't expecting a lot, but was delighted at the perfomance. All of the performers looked to be 20 or younger, with some looking no older than Seth and maybe even Blane! Those kids were dancing on balls, juggling, flipping everywhere, performing acrobatics and were pros at working the crowd (even the little guy was a natural showman). I was very impressed with their talent.

Afterwards, we explored the cave system on the first floor. Again, it was a boy's wonderland, with wormholes everywhere, but you were always safe. I decided to go down the 10 story slide. All I can say is...it was bumpy, and maybe my best sliding days are behind me! Very fun to have done it though.

After the caves, we traipsed through the upper level again, painting pictures in the art center and watching the boys play around with sponge building blocks in the building area. Seems like there was something new to discover around every corner! Exhausted, dirty but smiling, we piled into the car at about 3:30 to take a little rest at the hotel before dinner.

We crashed for a little bit, then made plans to swing by Union Station on our way to Pi Pizzaria, which had GF pizza. The Union Station complex is much bigger than Kansas City's, and more commercially developed, with a mall attached. We walked around the shops and Scott and the boys took a paddleboat ride on a little pond in the back of Union Station. We went into the Grand Hall and marveled at the beautiful architecture and details. We even went to the "Whispering Arch", which is an accoustical novelty--you can whisper into the wall at one end and someone can hear you (very well, I might add!) at the other end of the arch.

We finished out the day at Pi's with some really great GF pizza, which made the boys happy and crashed in the hotel, where we watched "Remember the Titans" on TV.