Forest Park

Today, I decided to visit Forest Park, which is west of the downtown, but easily reached on the Metrolink train.

Since it was going to be the warmest day of my stay in St Louis, around 30C/86F, I decided to go to the planetarium, which sits in the south-eastern corner of the park, as that is air-conditioned and much more comfortable.

I remembered that I've been here before and that some of the shows had been sold out then, so this time I made sure that I'd prepared by looking things up on the website before leaving the hotel.

When I looked up the day's shows and noticed that the afternoon showing of one of them was already sold out, which I thought was odd for this time of year, so I bought a ticket for all three shows, starting at 11.30am which gave me time to get there.

In the end, I arrived at 11.28am, as I had to wait longer than I had expected for a train, so I was glad that I had bought tickets in advance.  Each show lasts about 45 minutes, starting with one about what you can see in the sky tonight, then an exploration of the solar system and finally one on constellations.

None of the shows was busy, so it was mostly peaceful and restful, although the third show did have a couple of people who had brought babies in and they did make some noise, but only briefly.  Somebody also decided to ignore the instructions given at the start to not use the emergency exits because lights and sirens would go off if they did ... and they did, so we had to stop for a minute whilst that got reset.

 It turns out that the afternoon showing of the Sky Tonight wasn't full, but cancelled due to a private event.

Since it was then only 3pm, I decided to walk around the park a bit and then go back to my hotel for dinner and to watch the NFL season kickoff at 7.20pm.

As I walked around the park, I passed an archery association with members practicing - and lots of signs warning people to stick to the paths and not wander across the grass between the archers and the targets!

There were some nicely landscaped parts, and a series of "springs" with water bubbling up and flowing down the rock formations - more what I would call fountains, since the water was coming out of metal nozzles!

There was a glass house, The Jewel Box, which is rather overstating its grandness, but the temperature inside was actually much cooler than outside, although more humid for the benefit of the tropical plants.

It's only one space - this picture shows the entirely of what was in it!

I passed a nice fountain and then came across a cafe/restaurant that was sitting on the edge of the lake.  I checked its reviews and people said it was OK, and good for the views, especially at sunset, so I decided to eat dinner here instead of back at the hotel.

The views over the lake are indeed pretty, and you get to the see the ducks who mainly stayed the other side of the fence in the water, or sitting on the kayaks and "self-propelled paddle boats" that were for hire.

The ducks weren't a problem as they didn't come into the food area except when somebody tempted them in with food. 

 I was a bit too early to see the sunset, and it was quite empty until abour 5pm, when it got much busier, presumably as families came to the park after childen had finished school for the day.  

After that, I got the train back to the hotel watched the NFL game.  My fantasy team got off to a poor start: I have the Philadelphia defense in my lineup, and their star player was ejected on the opening kickoff for spitting at an opponent!  I picked up the Eagles kicker just before kickoff, as Buffalo's kicker is reportedly not going to play this week due to injury.  He did OK.  The game had a one hour weather delay for lightning during the third quarter, so it didn't end up after 11.