The Boat House

Tony and I had the opportunity to enjoy lunch together once again and decided to head to the Boat House.  We tried to go there a few weeks ago, but managed to go when there was a Boy Scout convention with more than 40,000 attending.  Needless to say, we didn't stick around to deal with the long wait!

The Boat House is a mostly outdoor restaurant in Forest Park.  And I have no idea why we don't eat there more.  It's such a great place.  It's right on the lake, you get to feed the ducks that walk up to your table, and the food is great as well.  You can even rent paddle boats from the restaurant to take out on the lake while you wait for your food!  Since the allow dogs on the paddle boats, we are definitely going to bring Sugar there soon!

The had the neatest hand dryers in the bathrooms.  This picture is a view from the top.  You stick your hands down inside of the machine and it automatically starts.  Unlike most hand dryers, this one is extremely strong and actually dries your hands!  It freaked me out a little because I could see my skin moving around as the force pushed it.

Beautiful View

This is the view from one of the top floor conference rooms at SLU.  It's a little hard to see because I took this with a camera phone, but it has an amazing view of the Arch and downtown.

The Best Lunch with Tony

A few days ago, Tony and I were able to grab lunch together.  We wanted to try a new place, so we decided on  The Best Steak House.  I had heard about it from a few people that I worked with, but never realized how close it was.  It's a quick two block walk from SLU.  Best is a classic cafeteria style restaurant.  For those of you from Sulphur, think Bonanza.  The most expensive thing on the menu is around $13.  Tony had the steak and shrimp plate for $9 and I had the chicken plate for $7.  Both came with a side and a drink and were quite delicious!

The side of the building.

Right across from Best Steak House is the Fabulous Fox Theatre.  Attending a musical there is definitely on our must-do list.

Meet "Earth Rabbit."  "Earth Rabbit" is a fourteen foot mosaic sculpture made of ceramic objects, glass, mirror, and tile.  Three local high schools created the sculpture.  The park where it is located is next door to Best Steak House and hosts a variety of free art shows (photography, painting, pottery, etc) every Thursday evening during the summer.

If you know Tony, you know that he sometimes latches on to odd topics and just won't let them go.  Two days prior to eating lunch at Best, Tony spent twenty minutes explaining to me how odd it was that you never saw a Second, Third, or Fourth, etc Baptist Church.  Always just a First Baptist.  Well, we finally found Third Baptist Church.  It's a block past Best Steak House right here in St. Louis.

Museum of Transportation

Lately, I've been picking all of our explore St. Louis Saturday outings and I really wanted Tony to select the next venue.  Since he was tired of all of my outdoor activities and wanted a day spent indoors enjoying the cool A/C, he selected the Museum of Transportation.  My husband should have spent a little more time researching his selection.  If he had, he would have learned that 90% of the Museum of Transportation is outside.  I'm only sorry that I didn't have the camera handy to capture his face when he realized that this would be yet another outdoor activity!

As you arrive at the museum, this is the sight that greets you.  The Museum of Transportation was originally founded in 1944 by a group of individuals dedicated to preserving the past.  In 1979, operation of the museum was turned over to the St. Louis County Parks.

The site where the museum is located sits alongside the original Pacific Railroad and includes one of the first two tunnels west

of the Mississippi River.

How could we not take a picture of this?  :)

This was by far the prettiest car in the collection.  The red paint was filled with glitter and we all know that I love my glitter!

A 1960 DiDia

A significant portion of the car building was dedicated to the history of Route 66 and its passage through St. Louis.

Of course we rode the little train! 

With more than 70 locomotives, the museum hosts the most complete collection of American rail power in the world.  They have restored the interiors of a few of them so that you can walk through them.

We believe that this is the oldest train in the collection.  It's also one of my favorites.  There's a lot of beauty in its design.

Geaux Tigers!

In honor of the UCLA vs. LSU game in the regionals this evening, I thought I'd share the new ESPN logo for LSU.  I absolutely love it!

Yummie's

Yes, the name of this restaurant is really Yummie's.  It's a soul food place that Tony recently discovered a few blocks from our house.

As you walk in the front door, the guy is right there next to the entrance grilling up your food.  At least you know that it's fresh!

The menu is very simple.  Each day, there are 5 meats and 8 or 9 sides to choose from.  For $8.99, you get one meat plus 3 sides and your drink.

LSU Alumni Association Crawfish Boil

Trust me, we ate a lot more than this small pile!  The alumni association flew up 970lbs of crawfish for the event this year and it was delicious!

Feeding the Ducks in Lafayette Square Park

Baby ducklings!  My favorite is the mostly yellow one.  She's precious!

The swans were so mean.  They kept chasing off the baby geese and baby ducklings.

Sugar wanted to play with the ducks so badly.  He finally decided to just lounge on the bench and enjoy the view.

Sugar and the Garden

Sugar oversees the planting of the garden. 

We were just happy that he wasn't rolling around in the potting soil!

More photos from the Botanical Garden

I liked the way that this lettuce looked so much that we bought a pack of seeds from the gift shop and planted them in our garden.  They look like little flowers!

Tower Grove House was the country home of the Missouri Botanical Garden founder Henry Shaw.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to tour the inside.  By the time that we made it to this area, we'd be in the gardens for four hours and my normally pleasant husband was tired of looking at flowers.

Henry Shaw is buried here amongst the gardens near his country home.  The stained glass is gorgeous.

Formal and Informal Rose Gardens

The botanical gardens have both a formal and an informal rose garden.  My favorite was the informal garden just because I loved the fountains in it.  Regardless, they were both gorgeous.  I think that my favorite thing about the gardens is how they encouraged you to get off the path and walk amongst the flowers.  You would even see children climbing trees throughout the park.  We definitely took advantage of stopping to smell the flowers while touring the roses! 

Pictures from the informal rose garden:

The formal rose garden is the second most popular spot in the gardens for a wedding.  There was one set to begin about an hour after we left.  It's a smaller venue, but I didn't like how it's the first thing that you see as soon as you enter the gardens through the front entrance.  Definitely not the most private area!

In the back of this picture, you can see the Linnean House.  It's the oldest continually operating greenhouse west of the Mississippi and is home to all of the gardens Camelias.  Unfortunately, they bloom in the winter, but we will be back to view them this November!  It was originally built to house the citrus trees, palms, and other tender plants over winter.