A night in the museum...

30.10.2009

If you hear the words 'City Museum', you might think history, or lots of facts, or perhaps, just plain boring. We went to St Louis 'City Museum' tonight with Mike and Shayna and had one of the the most random, fun nights in a long time. Ball pool

Ball pool

When approaching the museum, a tale- tell sign of the place is a yellow school bus dangling over the roof of a tall building. As we entered there was a large ball pool and all ages playing in it.

Arty spirals

The museum was a collection of different climbing apparatus, tubes, tunnels, slides, ropes all set in different 'scenes' like caves, underwater etc.

City Museum

Mike and David immediately leapt straight up the first tube tunnel thing, leaving me and the pregnant Shayna following slowly behind on our knees.

Climbing the spiral tubes

The museum spans over 4 floors of a large 11 storey block and has an outside section of tubes and tunnels which lead to aeroplanes, slides, a bonfire and the ball pool. We had paid extra to go on to the roof and had been given wrist bands which said quite cryptically 'Take the elevator to the 11th floor, do not get out at any other floor'. Strangely though, the lift only went up to 10 floors. We asked a staff member for a map but they didn't produce maps as the whole point of the museum is to stimulate creativity and exploration. On the roof obviously there was a ferris wheel, the said yellow bus dangling half over the edge, several enormous slides, a slippery wall, stepping stones over a pond and a giant... preying mantis. It was one of those evenings that felt like a dream where things and contexts merge together seamlessly. There was a slide on the roof which went all the way to the bottom (11 floors) and a scarier slide which went down into the darkness outside and had been cleverly designed to stop just millimetres before crashing into a concrete wall. We had a great time although think we may feel the effects tomorrow...

Us all at the museum

We also went to the Science museum this week with Shayna and Bella which now seems a bit lame in comparison, but was interactive and fun (and free) and occupied us for another (unheard of) rainy day. Bella the surgeon