Was our visit to the Gateway Arch wonderful? I mean, was it crowded and touristy? Was it tiresome and tedious? Were the kids whiny and bored? Was security a pain in the butt, and also worryingly lax? 
Yes, it was WONDERFUL!
Will thoroughly enjoyed her every second, from start to finish, parking garage entrance to parking garage exit. Syd was a bit more of a challenge--she's a child who enjoys her comforts, and a long walk on a warm day, a long wait in a long line, are nearly intolerable to her. However, there are three things in her favor: 1) She rarely throws a fit in public, 2) She perks up readily when the scenario changes, and 3) she can often be settled down with a Sesame Street podcast on my ipod. So she watched a lot of Sesame Street while we waited.
And the wait? Worth it. The crazy tram-ride was apparently super-fun, and as soon as we got all the way up and out of our tram at the top of the arch and the girls saw what it was all about, they were thrilled.
THRILLED.
Universally and unequivocally thrilled.
The little windows along the top of the arch are perfect for children, because they're on a well-carpeted slant that even a little kid can easily scramble up, and two kids fit perfectly at one window:
I was worried that the kiddos would look out the window for two seconds and then be done, and that I wouldn't get much of a chance to sightsee, but that wasn't the case at all. The girls visited every single window in the arch, and spent long minutes at each one, excitedly pointing out to each other objects of fascination such as Swimming Pools! On roofs! Satellite dishes! On roofs! A chair over there! On that roof! And lots and lots of debris floating down the flooded Mississippi.
I thought that it was pretty cool to watch a Cardinals game from the top of the arch:
And those tiny, tiny people?
They're 630 feet straight down from us.
We had a looooooong drive after that, which encompassed the final book in our Geronimo Stilton trilogy and the first seven audiobooks of the Magic Tree House series (book 8 is waiting for us on the way to Memphis, and then we'll move on to The Mouse and the Motorcycle), and today has been mostly about tantrums and junk food and dark circles under little eyes, but Willow did draw a picture this evening that looked a lot like this photo:
630 feet, straight up from us.
2 comments:
can you believe i was a missourian for 10 years and never once went to the arch? i have already promised cosmo that we will go up there someday. he has seen it from the interstate on the way to grandma's.
it sounds like what i expected, and totally worth it, for the kids.
sounds like you are handling the road trip beautifully.
The first Banana Republic I ever saw was in St. Louis. Then (in 1989) it was a much different store, of course -- selling woodworks, trekking gear, and "ethnic" jewelry.
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