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This week end as Mithra was just back from spending some time with her dad Kieran offered to take us to Saint Louis in Missouri... so we jumped on the offer...

The 5 hours journey seemed to fly by with 3 movies (felt like an airplane ... plus popcorn!)....

We headed of at 1ish and got to Saint Louis for 6ish and went to a lovely restaurant in town.... we then went to bed to get ready for the City Museum which seemed to be a great place for kids and adults all the same...

The next day we woke up and went to have breakfast in a lovely bread place called the Saint Louis Bread company... I had a souffle with spinach and cheese and a juice.... Teo had a lovely cinnamon cake and a water, Hayden a hot cross bun (who told you he was missing UK hey????) and a chocolate chip muffin and a orange juice.... It was all lovely...

Some views of the city

We then headed off to the City Museum a kids palace made out of recycling materials from wood, old aircraft, printing presses, trees... it is amazing to look at and has a lot to offer from a circus show, a craft room, an indoor skate board park to run on, a myriad of tunnels, a 10 storey slide, a cave, an aquarium (additional charge), a hamster wheel to exercise in, a massive ball patch where people just take each other out literally....

This is what the place looks like form outside ... pretty cool hey!

This is the war zone of ball pit!!!!

Some of the craft we did

We spent from 10 in the morning till 19.30 !!!! unbelievable .... lunch was great with a giant pizza... and we had a great laugh...

The Circus show

The slides

The indoor skate area:

The big hamster wheel:

Some more of the crazy interior... all made from recycled materials:

The next day we needed to head back early so we got a wake up call at 7.30 to see if we could get a ride in a Mississipi boat (you know the ones I mean) and also look at the arch ... a magnificent whilst imposing and simple monument by the Mississipi river....

We could not make the boat as the earliest would be 12:00 and it lasts 1hour so we decided not to go there and instead do the Arch visit....

Guess what !!!! we were early and it was shut !!!! so we headed up to town to our nice bread shop and went for breakfast....

On our return we faced some queues to get into the arch so we spent some time in the museum they had done in the visitor centre... Whao that was amazing .. a true picture of the conquest of the west with some excellent displays, variety of media, immense collection of artefacts... pretty inspiring layout for a museum...

I watch a documentary on Mrs Roosevelt who was British , did you know that??? and then did the Junior Ranger activity pack with the kids (or Teo to be more precise as Hayden gave up within 10 minutes of having to answer some questions that involved reading some of the notes!!!!)...

A very good museum...

In the queue to the train that takes you up the Arch you have some more museum and artefacts to see:

The trip in the arch is also great.. you get put in these minute cells that sit 5 people and get sent up 155 metres into the air!... you then come out on this corridor where you have windows that look out. We had excellent visibility and it was fantastic views!

Views from the top

We arrived in Hot Springs, Bill Clinton's town and went straight to the observation tower on top of the hill...

Then we walked the Promenade, a 30 minutes walk along the Bathouse Row and took some pictures of this pretty town... There are 8 bathouses remaining from the original 20... Some are shut like Maurice and Lamar. The rest do not allow kids under 14 to come in and all offer packages with access to the thermal bath as well as some treatments... highly recommended... Fordyce bathhouse gives children a Hot Springs National Park Junior Ranger activity Book which is very informative and fun at the same time...

This is the town where you find the Gangster Museum (we did not visit this) hence this great car parked in front of one of the hotels

This is inside a shop dedicated to Mountain View a local spring source that sells water all over the country...

You can drink hot or cold water throughout the town from fountains and it is really healthy as you can imagine... the temperature of the water is about 63 degrees Celsius so nice and warm!!!

We went to the bath with the children and the only place where they allowed kids under 14 was at the Arlington hotel.... boys and girls go separately so I had some time to myself!!! We all did a mud bath, followed by some hot towel wrapped around your body and I also had a steam cabinet which is so hot you think you are going to pass out!! Good fun and the kids enjoyed it... after fishy feet in Bali I think they will be high maintenance those kids ... watch out ladies!!!!

And I thought the mural in front of the cinema was cool.

Before meeting up with Kieran we decided to go to see the Museum of the Native American, i.e. the Indians to see what it looked like...

You can check the website http://www.monah.us/index.html....

The museum is set in an ultra modern building and is an amazing display of arrow heads (for those of you who really like arrow heads) and there is even a short documentary on several key arrow heads design such as the "clovis" .. but I will not spoil your curiosity and will let you come and see it for yourselves!!

There are a lot of displays of potteries of the different tribes that inhabited the area as well as the further afield south America, there are some displays on Maya and Inca pottery too.

But I think what I liked most was the beautiful display of dresses and outfits worn by the different Indian tribes. The bead work is amazing and we should really learn from them, the leather is so soft and the shoes look so comfortable... You can also see the ancestor of the baby backpack .. so much nicer looking than our contemporary one even though looking a tat too right compared to our fully padded versions!

There is some displays of bows and weapons which are of some interest .. and of the animals...

I think the ironic display that shows the modern pottery (if you imagine the fine French Limoges pottery you are quite near the design) which was made by the American obviously once the Indians had all been sent to special reserves... The pieces just looked so rigid compared to the rest of the museum but I supposed it is part of the history so we will let them off...