By Simran Jayasinghe
We woke up at Susil Seeya’s house and got ready to drive to St. Louis. We had a scrumptious breakfast of spinach omelettes, sunny-side-up eggs, cheese, toast, butter, and jam. Our parents had omelettes with milk tea, and Kiran, Svara and I had sunny-side-up eggs with juice. Susil Seeya sure can cook!
After that, we hopped into the car and drove to Jefferson City to look at the state capitol building. It rained, again, and our drive to Jefferson City took a little more than an hour.
The state capitol building is made as a replica of the white house, but much smaller. The architecture was different than the architecture of the Nebraska statehouse building. There were many exhibits talking about historical events in Missouri, and also a couple of hands-on activities like lifting a pack that the soldier’s in the Civil War had to carry. (We tried that one, and only succeeded in lifting it when all three of us, lifted it together!). We looked at the gift shop, but sadly, they didn’t have keychains, and we decided we would wait to get something in St. Louis.
We drove through the rain to St. Louis, and finally got there at 5:00 p.m. We checked in to the Hilton Garden Inn, and after dropping our luggage off at our hotel room, decided to go to the Gateway Arch. To go up in the Arch, you need to buy tickets in advance, and so my dad quickly went online and bought some tickets. We bought the ‘Journey to the Top’ tickets, which means you get to ride to the top and watch the documentary movie. The price for each ticket is $13 for Adults (16 and over) and $10 for Children (3-15 years old). The Museum of Westward Expansion ( the museum about how the Arch was build) was under construction and therefore, closed.
We arrived at the Gateway Arch at about 6:00 p.m. It was still raining outside and we got soaked walking from the car to the arch entrance. We went to the entrance to the museum, but were told that we were only allowed to enter 20 minutes before the time on our tickets to go up in the Arch. Our tickets were for the 7:15 tram ride, so we had an hour to wait. We stood under a tent they had set up , until we were finally allowed inside. We got in line to board the tram that went up in the Arch. We had to wait in about 4 more lines until we were finally able to board the tiny tram! My dad, Kiran, Svara and I were in one tram. Our mom stayed in the museum because she thought that the tram would be too claustrophobic.
After being in it, I agree, the small capsule would’ve been way too small for our mom’s liking. The view from the top was magnificent. We could see the buildings on the other side of the river. Then we took the tram back down again. We picked a keychain from the gift shop and watched a 30 minute movie on how the Arch was made. By then it was 9:45 p.m., so we went back to the hotel and fell asleep.
