Travel Memories: City Museum

Four of our good friends (both couples) have scheduled trips to Chicago in January! We’re so excited they’re going. We’ve enjoyed plenty of time in the Windy City, so we’ve been excited to give some traveler’s advice about what to see and do there.

In addition to fun Chicago memories have come memories from other trips we’ve taken – including our time in St. Louis last summer, when we visited the City Museum.

Never before has their been a deceiving a name as “City Museum.” When I first visited the old building just north of downtown St. Louis in 2007, I was expecting to quietly browse a series of exhibits telling the city’s story. What I found made me wish I’d worn more comfortable clothes.

The museum is essentially, minus a few creative programs for kids, a giant adult playground. Imagine an old commercial high-rise, say, 10 stories tall. Leave that building abandoned for 40 years – then strip the first five floors bare, salvage the scraps, and use them to create a complex network of tunnels through air ducts, walls, floors, and straight out of the building. It’s amazing beyond comprehension. If you’re like me, there’s a part of you that has to suppress the desire to climb trees, play hide and seek, and physically exert yourself in ways that aren’t socially appropriate in most adult contexts. The City Museum gives you the chance to let your imagination (and body) run wild.

While a part of the museum looks like a cave, another part is a human skateboarding park – allowing your body to use half-pipes in the way a skateboard would. Slides take you from floor to floor. Large metal cages and tubes run between rooms…and spontaneously take you out of the building.

Indeed, it’s what’s outside that’s the most mind-boggling. Suspended two to five stories above the ground are a full playground, a series of nets and tubes, and a full-size Cessna. So if crawling through a tunnel that’s beneath the floor isn’t your thing, perhaps you’d enjoy crawling through a tunnel made of thin metal coils, suspended five stories above a parking lot. Just make sure nothing’s hanging out of your pockets.

So, enough nostalgia. Cat and I loved the museum on my fortunate second visit last year. Here are some of our memories:

Me, obviously in a little pain.

Cat, suspended by coils.

Metal tunnel from the museum's fifth floor.

It's so much fun!

Another wild shot.

It was harder than I thought.

The playground from afar.

Trip to the Border

The northeast border, that is. Two weeks ago we visited our friends Mark and Laura Pulliam in Texarkana – a peculiar city that straddles Texas and Arkansas, hence its name. Mark and Laura were excellent hosts, and taught us to make a bunch of new foods we’ll probably blog about in the coming weeks! It was great to spend time with them. We miss not having them in Austin.

Here’s a shot from Texarkana’s most popular tourist attraction:

Texarkana City Hall

It’s worth noting that in this shot, I’m standing in a dry county and Cat’s in a wet county. That’s right. Texarkana, Texas is dry while Texarkana, Arkansas – a stone’s throw across State Line Avenue – is wet. I must admit, it was a bit strange to see churches and boutiques along one side of the road with liquor stores and bars along the other. But if Texarkana, Texas wants to forfeit the tax revenue, let them do it, I suppose…

With that, I’ll give a shameless plug for Hopkin’s Icehouse, a great bar and restaurant on the Arkansas side of things. The icehouse is great for casual drinking and great food – with a good selection of non-domestic beers and delightful menu of non-bar food (instead of wings, you’ll find blue cheese, Italian specials, etc). Check them out if you’re reading this from the Texarkana “metro.”

The B