Kenny and Karen

Continuing on our vacation journey *grins*

Friday Neil and Julie came up to meet us in St. Louis. Kenny and I had ventured out to take another look at the arch and Neil and Julie just drove by about noon to pick us up. We were SO VERY thankful that Neil chauffeured us around. There really are some tricky one way streets and excitable traffic in St. Louis.

First off we headed directly to Forest Park. It is a HUGE park like setting that has several wonderful museums (art, history, and science) as well as fountains, statues and The Zoo!! An added bonus is that everything there is FREE!

Once we made our way through the maze of streets and traffic to find a parking place the zoo was looking pretty busy. So, while the "school field trip" crowds died down we decided to visit the art museum.
Just walking around in the beautiful trees and fountains with our sweet friends was fun. Kenny and Neil were busy catching up and Julie and I had fun giggling and talking *smiles*The art museum had all sorts of beautiful exhibits, it even had one of the original Monet water lilies pieces, pretty exciting to see!

After touring the exhibits we were all getting pretty hungry, so we had lunch at Puck's cafe (Wolfgang Puck, the famous chef's cafe) la-tee-dah *laughs* it was kind of pricey for what we got *laughs* I suppose you're paying for his name huh?

Julie and I discovered some neat little masks at the gift shop...
After lunch we walked across the park over to the Zoo. Whew we were so excited! So many animals to see and all for FREE!

We didn't know where to go first! Here are a few pictures of our favorites...
The giraffes (my favorite animal)
The penguins, their exhibit was SO AMAZING! They were outside swimming in a little pool and I was saying to Julie "Wow, it's pretty warm out here for penguins, isn't it?" Just then Kenny escorted us to a doorway that led to an arctic winter wonderland where the temperature dropped to about 40 degrees!
They were frolicking around on the rocks and chirping out their hello's. We could have reached out and grabbed one to take home! *winks*
Next we went on to see the tigers! Little did we know there were FIVE young sibling tigers who were bouncing and splashing and wrestling all over their pool and habitat. They were so entertaining to watch. Often at zoos the animals are just lazing about with one eye open, but these little guys were going crazy!! Julie and Kenny got some great pictures!
We toured that zoo until it closed and they took the animals in for the evening *laughs* Then after a little further exploring of the fountains at Forest Park we decided to head out to find somewhere to eat dinner together.

We eventually happened upon a cute little pizza place called Imo's Pizza in a neat little suburb called Webster Grove.
Julie and I were fascinated with the Apple shaped chairs that were outside in a couple little parks near Imo's. Of course, inducing much laughter from our husbands, we had to take some pictures in these chairs *grins*
By this time the storm clouds were rolling in and we hopped back in the car. Neil bravely navigated us through the downpour and enormous lighting bolts back to our hotel. We said our goodbye's and dashed inside and Neil and Julie headed off to their hotel.

As we were riding the elevator up to our room Kenny and I were reminiscing about the wonderful day we'd had and both feeling sad that we had to part ways with Neil and Julie so soon. So, we decided to call them up and see if we could meet them for breakfast the next day! We just can't get enough of those two *laughs*