St. Louis Weekend, Part I

I was in St. Louis from last Friday through yesterday for work. Mikaela was upset that I was going to be gone for so long, and we found out that travelling with kids on Amtrak is really cheap (children under 15 are half-price, and infants under 2 are free). So we made a last minute decision to make a little family vacation out of the weekend portion of my trip. Miriam, Mikaela, and Jonathan took the afternoon train to St. Louis on Friday and then went back early on Monday morning. Mikaela was so excited about riding on the train that she was literally bouncing on the bed with a huge grin on her face when we gold her about it.

On Saturday morning, we met up with some friends of mine at the St. Louis Zoo. Mikaela was happy to see her friends Maddie and Jack again – she hadn’t seen them since our last trip to St. Louis together about a year and a half ago. Mikaela enjoyed riding the Conservation Carousel, but she said her favorite part was the playground at the zoo. It has a series of slides that go right through the sea otter habitat, so that as you go through the tubular slide, you can watch the sea otters swimming around and playing. We spent a good chunk of our time in the Children’s Zoo area, where the kids got to brush goats and see some smaller animals up close. The pygmy marmosets were cute, and Mikaela recognized them from seeing them on Diego. They also had a huge iguana and some cool little frogs in neon colors.

Saturday night was compromised a bit when I managed to blow a tire maneuvering in the tight confines of the hotel parking garage. The staff at the Drury Plazawere wonderfully helpful though, and helped minimize the disruption to our trip. Instead of going back out, we went for a swim at the hotel pool (most of it was pretty shallow, so Mikaela could walk around in it on her own, as well as show off her swimming skills). Dinner took FOREVER, because the restaurant was packed on a Cardinals baseball game night. But the food was good and Mikaela and Jonathan were both incredibly well-behaved, considering how late it was.