Colleen and Aubrey take STL: World Aquarium

Hello again!
This weekend my roommate Colleen and I went to St. Louis! It was soooo much fun and I am so glad we got to take the trip! Earlier in the year we made kind of a "bucket list" of things we wanted to do before our year of service is over and going to St. Louis was very high on the list! We finally got to check it off! 

Since this post has a million pictures (I'll apologize in advance for the otter overload)
I am going to split our St. Louis adventures up into a couple different posts. Enjoy!

We took off Thursday night after service around 3:30. We were headed to Eureka which is about a half hour from downtown St. Louis. We ended up camping at the KOA campground which was very nice! The campground was very close to the Six Flags. We arrived around 6 and we were hungry so we went off in search of some food! We ended up at a sports bar/grill. I got a burger and Colleen got a GIANT pretzel!

Then, we headed back to the campground to get set up for the night. 

Our tiny tent!

We knew it was supposed to be rainy that night, so I was a little nervous about camping but Colleen was super excited!Luckily we had tarps to put over the tent so we stayed pretty dry! We did get a pretty big storm with lots of lightning, (yikes) but we survived to tell the tale! It's always an adventure, right? 

The next morning, we headed off towards the big city! The first stop, the World Aquarium! I can't even tell you how excited I was for this! After a few wrong turns, we found the aquarium. They are in the process of moving the aquarium from the City Museum to a new location so there wasn't really a sign or anything saying WORLD AQUARIUM HERE! So we just peeked in the windows and saw fish and knew we found the right place.But, they were supposed to be open at 9 and the lights were off and no one was there, so I got a little bit nervous about our tour. But, we were plenty early so we walked around the city for a little bit. We ended up going to the visitors center and asked them about the aquarium and they told us they were moving so they aren't open to the public, only for tours. So that made me feel a lot better! We continued to wonder around until it was time for our tour. We found the City Museum (more about that later) that we would be going to the next day and got some Starbucks!

 Then, we headed back to the Aquarium for our tour! Prepare for picture overload here! Our tour was AMAZING! Well worth the money! We were supposed to be with another family for the tour but they went to the wrong place, so it was just Colleen and I and our guide. We got to feed and hold lots of amazing things! Lots of reptiles and fish at the first location. We fed fish, turtles crocodiles, alligators. We even held a tarantula- twice, I kinda can't believe I actually did it but I'm glad I did! We also held snakes, starfish, and a blue-tongued skink!

The aquarium

Yes, I held that!

And fed this beast

Blue-tongued skink!

Snakes!

Feeding the crocodile

Feeding the turtle

Feeding the alligator

He was so cute!

After feeding and holding the animals, it was time to head to our second location... with the OTTERS! Right as we were getting ready to leave, the family who was supposed to be with us showed up saying they were sent to the wrong location, they were not pleased. But we were done there, so our guide took us to the next location and told them to meet us there. They never showed up so it was just us again!
We started off seeing a couple birds, who were very loud and loved attention. 

Next, we fed some turtles some mealworms. This was so fun!

Next, we fed a giant bullfrog some worms as well! I have to say the frog was one of my favorites! He was really cute and it was funny to see how fast he could stick his tongue out and get the worms!

My Prince ;)

Next, we held an even bigger tarantula! And watched the guide feed some crickets to a centipede- YUCK! We also got to hold a chameleon!

3 horned chameleon

Next, was the sloth! I used to love sloths and wanted one for a pet back in the day- lol- so I was pretty excited! This sloth was very picky. It ate about 2 apple slices then it was done. But it was still really cool just to be so close!

And, finally..... the OTTER! The highlight of my whole trip! IT WAS AMAZING! I am now more obsessed with otters! The otters name was Tim and he was absolutely adorable and I wanted to take him home with us. He would hold your hand and basically be adorable. I can now check hold hands with an otter off of my bucket list!

Not going to lie, probably one of the best days of my life!!!!! And after that, our tour was over! I could have stayed and hung out with Tim all day, but we couldn't :( Our guide was so awesome and we had such a great time!

Our guide

After our tour, we headed to our AirBNB to check it out and get settled in for the night. Then, we took off for the "Loop." The "Loop" is by Washington University and it has a lot of restaurants and shops and is home to the St. Louis Walk of Fame and Chuck Berry statue. I was really excited to check it out but I have to say I was pretty disappointed by it. But we still had fun. We walked up and down the street probably 6 times checking things out and trying to decide what we wanted to do.Then we tried to decide where to eat. By the time we picked somewhere, it was about 9 o clock and I was very hangry and we were denied entrance to a lot of places because we weren't 21. So, the Loop was not my favorite place.

We had to get a soda at the famous Fitz

Chuck Berry statue

And that's it for Friday! More to come about thes rest of the trip!
Thanks for reading!
Aubrey :)