Trip to STL (Movie Monday included)

We recently went to St. Louis and stayed at a hotel near Union Station, which is an old train depot.  The hotel we stayed at has a bunch of large model trains (behind glass, thank goodness, and away from little fingers!) and we knew Boo would love to see them.  I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of him when he was studying them running back and forth between all of them like some demented train-obsessed child.  I probably could have taken my book and read for the evening while he kept pointing out all seven or eight trains that were on display!

There is a large man-made pond full of fish right next to the hotel and Union Station.  While we were waiting to meet friends for dinner, we let Boo feed the fish.  They were huge!  And have obviously been fed well and by many people; they definitely knew what they wanted to happen when they saw us peering over the edge at them.

We met our friends for dinner at a seafood restaurant that had some great food!  But the best, by far, was the dessert that the three of us shared:

I figure it was good for us since it had bananas on it!!

That night, Boo could not get to sleep (hmmm, I wonder why? but I promise he didn't have that much dessert!).  He was soooo restless, rolling back and forth, from one end of the bed he was in to the other.  I got him water twice (which he gulped down), covered him up multiple times, and finally told him that if he needed something, he had to carefully get out of bed and come over to me and ask; this last was because he almost pushed himself out of bed trying to get my attention, even though we had him surrounded by pillows and blankets!  I then tried going to sleep, but my Mama mode wouldn't let me.  I was dozing on and off when I opened my eyes and there stood Boo, right by the side of the bed, whispering "HEY, MA-ma, I want water!"  After that, he dropped off to sleep quickly.  Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky.

The next day we went to the St. Louis Zoo before driving home.  We probably got to see 1/4 of it, which is about the same amount we saw last time, so we're up to having seen about half of the zoo.  :)  We saw leopards and zebras and orangutans, oh my!

Snow leopards taking a nap in the sun.

These orangutans were also trying to take naps; there is one rolled up under the  sheet on the right.

Boo had a close-up encounter with one of them:

fist bump, i.e. the rock

Playing peek-a-boo.

At the end of our time at the zoo, he took a gorilla ride with Dada's help:

We had a great time and wish we lived closer so we could take advantage of the free admission to the zoo and the many other fun things a larger city is known for.  But we're smaller city folks at heart, so I guess we'll just have to continue taking numerous mini-vacations.  I like that plan.  :)