After our tour of the Soulard Farmer's market, we packed the kids up in the car and headed back to our hotel to go see the arch. Lucky for us, the hotel was ACROSS the STREET from it!
It was drizzling, but only a little bit, so we didn't let that get us down. I mean...how can you when you are looking at THIS:
The architecture of the arch is seriously amazing. And the bases of it just don't seem big enough to support the entire structure...but they do....
If you look way up at the very center of the top, you can see the observation windows (you'll get to see these a bit later in the post also)...
That's how close our zoom gets...can you see the people in the windows?
Emily and I walking along...chit chatting...
Noah was just as enamored with the arch as he was with running around the arch...
Little Max joined him...
Run Max, RUN!
We got inside and immediately bought tickets to go up the elevators to the top of the arch. I visited the arch as a child, and vaguely remembered doing this -- I remembered that the elevators were small and cramped. And I remember that when we got to the top, I could feel the Arch swaying side to side in the breeze.... I was a bit reluctant to go up it again, but at the same time excited...
Can you tell just how excited I am? LOL. Sam was fascinated with the scenery of the 'guts' of the Arch that you could see out of the tiny window on the front of the elevator. And yes, the elevator was as tiny and cramped as I remembered it. But it wasn't claustrophobic for me, luckily.
I think Joe was just as excited as I was....
Family photo op in the elevator! :)
As soon as we got to the top, Max crawled up the ledge and pressed his little face against the window. I think he would have stayed up there all day long if we would have let him. No fear in that one!
The floor is sloped at the top, so at the very peak of the observation tower, you are 630 feet off the ground.
We had to go and look out every single window just to see if the view changed...
And then Sam decided he needed to take a look also.
There's the view of our hotel from the top of the Arch.
I love this shot. What a sweetie. What a perfectly adorable chubby hand...
This picture cracks me up for several reasons. #1 -- Max is using his 'cheeser' smile -- the one where we often have to remind him to "open his eyes". #2 -- Sam is distraught that Max is so close to me -- stretching out his little arm to tell him to move away. Sam has a serious case of not wanting to share Mommy...
It was a wonderful family excursion. Little Max has been asking me daily if we are going back to the Arch. He didn't want to leave the top and ride the elevator back down -- and once we had, he wanted to ride it back up again. I told him he could, but only if he paid for another ticket. The prices were $10/adult and $5/child 3 or older...so we paid $25 to ride to the top. Not a bad price for such an awesome experience...at least it's not if you only have to pay it once....
Oh, and luckily it didn't seem to be a windy day...at least I couldn't feel the Arch swaying like I had remembered...
1 comment:
I, too, love the picture of Sam's chunky little hand at the window, but the one of you and the little boys, where Sam is pushing away LM? You are GORGEOUS there. Beaming, simply beautiful. - Glad you weren't claustrophobic and there wasn't any marked swaying. :)
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