St Louis

Today we had the whole day in St Louis and the only thing we had planned to really do here is the Gateway Arch.
Headed up that way this morning, about a 25 minute walk from our hotel and got tickets to take the 'Journey to the Top'.
Sitting in a little bubble-like tram car that drags you up to the top (630 feet). There are 8 cars that hold 5 people. And they wouldn't want to be big people that's for sure.
The view was pretty impressive, but it is a small area at the top and they do pack a few people up there at a time. We had some quick looks out the windows, got some photos and then headed back down again.
Downstairs includes a theater where we sat and watched a 15 minute historic documentary about the making of the arch. It was actually really interesting to watch. Freaked me out the lack of safety gear the guys used whilst building it. 400 feet in the air and their walking along steel beams that are swinging around in the wind gusts! They even mentioned in the documentary that before the work began it was 'estimated' that there would be 13 workers 'lost' during building. They proudly state that there was not 1.
(Side note - again with the timing, it's the 50th anniversary this year since the completion and opening of the Arch)
Decided that an afternoon at the St Louis Zoo sounded good so stopped for some lunch first. When we came out of the restaurant we found a horse and carriage which the boys wanted to ride in back to our hotel. We agreed and during the ride our driver, Miss Holly, had a great chat with us. She wanted to know about Australia and about our trip and then told us that if we had time we should visit the St Louis City Museum as we'd have a ball there. When we got off we decided to check it out as none of the boys were really that interested in the zoo anyways.
The St Louis City Museum should not be referred to as a Museum...an educational four storey play centre would be so much more appropriate! The place was AWESOME!
The kids spent about three hours running around the place crawling through tunnels and dropping down slides to come out on another floor and just generally thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Great place! There's a section outside where they have shells of real planes emptied out and tunnels through them to massive slides and all sorts of things to see and climb over. Craig was a little bit shattered that the roof wasn't open, (when he asked, it opens tomorrow). We could see from the ground a ferris wheel,

school buses hanging off the roof, a giant grass hopper and numerous other wonderful and whacky things.
This was the type of place you could easily get lost in all day.
Tomorrow it's back on the road again.