117. FOREST PARK

St. Louis, Missouri

7/20/2012

We spent the night in an America’s Best Value Inn in a small town outside of St. Louis called Bridgeton. We began the morning with a fun, but stressful mission: Knock off all of the St. Louis places and drive six hours home all in one day. Here we go!

We started off at Forest Park. The St. Louis World’s Fair happened here in 1904. Most of the exposition was designed to be easily broken down afterwards, so there’s little left. One building that was designed to last is the St. Louis Art Museum, which was the focus of our visit. The rest of the park is now the largest municipal park in the country. (Patricia says it dwarfs New York’s Central Park.) There’s a zoo and a few other museums scattered all throughout its confines. Everything is completely free. Parking is mostly free, except there are some choicer lots that charge up to $15 if you’re not willing to walk. We didn’t want to walk either, but you can guess where we parked!

The art museum was an art museum. It was a little hard to navigate with strollers. This is probably because the building was built in 1904, so elevators were probably added much later and with limits to where they could go. Nonetheless, we had to backtrack a lot to find elevators that weren’t marked very well.

The claim to fame of this museum is its pieces from Oceania. (That’s Australia and nearby islands if you’re not snobby enough to know that term.) We had to ask directions twice to find them, and when we did there were only a few pieces hidden in the back of the museum. Since these are supposed to be the big attraction here it was surprising they weren’t more prominently displayed.

I did get to see the portrait of George Washington that the artist said “will one day be worth $100.” It’s now the portrait used on every dollar bill.

The kids were a little unnerved by the mummies. They seemed to understand there were actual people in there, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

Daniel was mostly bored, but utterly fascinated by this giant modern art painting that was supposed to represent the Chernobyl disaster. We passed it a couple of times due to the backtracking and each time he got excited and wanted to stop and look at it again. I guess he likes modern art. About nuclear disasters. Ok. He’s moved beyond Greek statues of naked women, anyway. “Ewwwww!” he says whenever we see one now.

I can’t really complain about this museum. Remember: it anchors the biggest city park in the country. Anyone who’s a local would be crazy not to go here any chance they could. You’ve got this huge and beautiful park filled with completely free museums! Every city in America should be jealous.