May in St Louis, Part 2: A Grand Day Out

[muckefuck]

As I dilly-dallied on beginning my series of posts on our recent omnibus weekend in STL, I did harbour a slight hope that if I delayed long enough, my sainted brother might come through and write up a description of his own which I could simply piggyback on. Voilà! My capsule review of the City Museum is simply this: I cannot remember the last time I heard, "That was AWESOME!" from that many different people in a single day.

But there's so much more to it. If you follow the link above, you'll see a shaky photo of an attraction within the Enchanted Caves. This is a large metal cylinder with a rounded top which...er...slowly fills with water until it tips overs and...uhm...well...everything inside it comes gushing out a slit in the top. AWI insisted that we stay to watch it happen and I'm glad I did, because I would never have believed it otherwise.

Having learned his lesson from previous trips, Dad brought along knee pads which he gladly passed on to me once he realised that he could stand back and let his more limber sons follow their nephews through tiny tunnels and constricted catwalks. I left them on most of the day and at least three or four people exclaimed, "Oh, good idea!" when they saw them. Of course, several of the enclosed catwalks proved easier to navigate on one's back, even if it did mean praying under one's breath not to see the contents of one's pockets plummet three storeys to the pavement below.

It wasn't all sense-defying stunts and feats of strength, however. One of my fondest memories is camping out among a pair of stationary trams while Dad took ECI up to the highest catwalk of all (where he panicked momentarily and had to be carried out on his grandfather's stomach after a masterful repositioning from cat position to crab position that we all watched breathlessly from far below). bunj, Mom[*], and I enjoyed the cool breeze while AWI tried sporadically to drag us into his make-believe of a sinking ship. A few feet away was a set of slides so steep they had climbing ropes. (The nephs initially balked, but King of Adventure ECI eventually shinnied his way up, just like his show-off uncle.) Watching people navigate these--from both directions--was a solid twenty minutes' entertainment; seeing the boys alternatively lose and chase their Crocs out of the intervening slide another fifteen.

With yardapes outnumbered two-to-one from get-go, it was relatively easy for the big people to break off occasionally and see to our needs for bathroom breaks, a pleasant sit-down, or just five minutes in a room with no one screaming bloody murder around us. (Next visit: Knee-pads and earplugs.) My only disappointment was that for a "museum", it was sparse on the interpretation. Many of the vintage opera posters were gorgeous (the ones for Tosca were almost enough to get to reconsider my loathing of it), but not one of them had any provenance; if the year or place of origin wasn't part of the design, we were merely left with our best guesses.

But that's a quibble. For many a reasonably-adventurous adolescent, the City Museum must be within a hair of being Heaven on Earth. (Forgive me e_ticket, but fuck Disneyworldland; when they start letting you climb all over the rides, then they'll be in the running.) As bunj said of the place, "It's like he built the place I dreamt of living in when I was twelve years old."

[*] This should answer any lingering questions about whether her insistence on coming crashed or ultimately enriched the trip.

Comments

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

You loathe Tosca?

How can any right-thinking person loathe Tosca?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I could point out that it's got easily one of the ten stupidest plots of any opera in the regular repertoire. Or that I can't stand any of the characters and can't wait for them to off themselves. Or that, as usual, Puccini's score has all the subtlety of a Hummer on a putting green. Or that bunj and Nuphy dislike it at least as much as I do.

But I'm too flabbergasted by the implication that you consider me a "right-thinking person" to say anything.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

Watch where you leave that letter-opener!