St. Louis Trip, Part II

On Sunday, we switched over to the Westin Cupples Station, my usual hotel for business trips to St. Louis. They instantly upgraded me to a room on the Executive Club floor, without my even asking for it. The extra space was really nice. The room even had a sofa bed, so Mikaela could sleep in her own bed.

We spent a good chunk of the day on Sunday at the City Museum, which has an amazing array of tunnels, ladders, and slides all over the place. Mikaela enjoyed clambering around, and Miriam even climbed to the top of the huge outdoor structure with her (I handled the descents to the bottom of the caves). It gets hot doing all of that climbing, so we cooled off with some painting in Art City area and finished off our trip by taking in a magic show, part of the City Museum’s in-house circus-performance school.

Sunday night, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the Westin’s Clark Street Grill. Mikaela was incredibly patient when the macaroni & cheese that she’d ordered from the children’s menu arrived covered in spicy red pepper. The waiter happily replaced it was “unadulterated” mac & cheese, and Mikaela satisfied herself with the fresh fruit that came with the mac & cheese and the warm bread that was on the table. We even ordered dessert, bringing the molten chocolate cake and a plate of lemon bars back up to the room with us, for a “last night of the trip” treat.

We had to be up early on Monday morning, as the train was scheduled to depart at 6:00 a.m. I got Miriam and the kids to the train station with time to spare, then returned to the hotel to get ready for the day’s deposition. The train trip home was mostly uneventful, with the exception of an hour long delay when they were almost home, as the train had to pull off to a side track to allow a freight train to pass by. Mikaela once again got to show her sweet side on the way home. Another little girl was on the train with them, and she was incredibly bored, as she hadn’t brought anything to play with on the train with her. So Mikaela generously shared her portable DVD player and Lady & the Tramp DVD with her new “friend”.