St. Louis Day #1

We loaded up the Sequoia and headed up Interstate 55 to St. Louis after the kids finished their last day of school on Friday. They were excited for a road trip and Gary and I were looking forward to a long weekend in a city neither of us had really toured.

We had considered stopping at Lambert's, home of the "throwed rolls" for dinner on Friday, but since we got away so early and the portions we had heard were HUGE at Lambert's, we decided not to have a 3:30 pm dinner and kept driving to St. Louis. We made it to town with no problems and found our hotel after 3 attempts to exit the interstate. Gary's GPS has a slight delay in the voice and we kept missing our exit!! Finally, we checked in and the girls were bummed we could not see the arch from our window. I thought we probably could based on the fact that is why I chose the hotel I did and then Gary and I checked for ourselves and what did we see right outside our window?? The ARCH. The girls were oblivious to the 600 ft tall steel structure looming outside!!

We decided to eat only local on our trip and picked up a great guide to local eateries in the area. We ventured out to a restaurant called Blueberry Hill. It reminded me of Huey's based on their menu but was a great little place to eat. It had lots of "collectibles" throughout the restaurant including a showcase of trinkets from the Smurf's, PeeWee's playhouse, and other tv shows along with the Elvis Room and the various Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Neat place and yummy food. For dessert we found a place called The Cup, which sold huge and very tasty cupcakes. It was a cross between Muddy's and Gigi's from home. The icing was taller than muddy's but they were still very yummy. The girls picked out the "confetti" cupcakes which were the basic vanilla ones with sprinkles. I chose the carrot cake and Gary chose the dark chocolate. All in all a great first night.

The girls were restless at bedtime. The not so fun part of being in a hotel on the road is we all try to go to bed at the same time but with different night time habits. Caroline missed her CD player with the Curious George soundtrack and Anna missed her Ipod docking station and Gary and I missed our sound machine. The girls finally stopped giggling and we called it a night.

Off to do some sightseeing and have some fun on Saturday!

view from our window...where were the girls looking??

anna and i at dinner

gary with caroline at dinner