Thursday Thirteen...my favorite things last week on our trip

These are the first Thirteen Things I thought of as favorite things about our road trip last week (in no particular order).

1. Sweet Tea...it started with Mickey D's Sweet Tea after seeing a sign for McAllister's famous Sweet Tea between St. Louis & Memphis somewhere and ended with me buying ever tall can or bottle of Arizona Sweet Tea on every stop along the way on our way home in case I could not find it around here (and of course our local WalMart has it and another brand-Tradewinds!) Mmm!
2. The St. Louis Arch...great view from the top and some cool pics from the bottom and our hotel...plus a bump on the head that is (finally) no longer hurting after a week of tenderness!
3. The St. Louis City Museum & Aquarium...Also known as Emma's favorite part of our trip on the last day. A MUST SEE despite the hefty entrance fees, but what museum isn't pricey? And, they had the best tasting blue cotton candy I've had in a LONG time!
4. Drury Plaza Hotel, the hotel we stayed in the first night of our trip. They offered a great free breakfast complete with biscuits & gravy, scrabled eggs, sausage and more. Plus, they have cocktail hour with free drinks each evening and a free hour of long distance which was great for calling home. The bed was super comfy and we had great views from our 9th floor room, great location!
5. You may sense the St. Louis theme, while my hubby loved Graceland, I was particulary in love with St. Louis...so next on my list. Union Station, great little shops for souvenirs and great restaurants including Hard Rock and Landry's which are located in this atrium type area with a lake/pond complete with Koi fish you can feed. Emma loved that too! What's more, it looks like a castle from the outside, that part is a fancy Hyatt Regency Hotel too.
6. Graceland does still make my list as a favorite even though I'm by no means an Elvis fanatic...I'm a fan, but not wacko about the whole thing. It was cool to be in his home and imagining him there, touching a railing on the staircase to/from the basement thinking he maybe touched that same spot...just a neat place!
7. Beale Street, Memphis. This area of town had a really cool atmosphere! Hard Rock was there as well as a lot of cool looking pubs and some great shops. There was music coming from one little restaurant patio area with a blues/jazz singer in addition to music in all the pubs as you passed by and even just a group of guys on the street and one of them was singing, he was great! We also had fabulous food there, but that's #8 on my list!
8. Silky O'Sullivan's Pub, Beale Street. Trevor had catfish, Emma had fantastic chicken fingers and I had absolutely delicious, tender, flavorful ribs with yummy sweet tea! The ribs had a dry rub which was great just like that but each table has bbq sauce you can use too and that was also great! Emma's chicken fingers were so tender and juicy and meaty and just the right amount and texture of batter! Trevor's catfish was really good too and I'm not much of a fish person.
9. The people! What is a vacation without great people? We had wonderful experiences everywhere we went. We were always treated well, greeted by friendly smiling people and boy did those southern women LOVE Emma! hee hee...it was fun walking into all the shops and being greeted by compliments on how cute she was or her curly blonde hair. What parent doesn't love that!?
10. Emma Rose, a not so terrible two year old. She behaved SO much better than I expected, I was afraid we'd have meltdowns on the freeway with the long car rides and we didn't have even one. The closest we came to that was just her saying "heiney hurts" when we were in the last leg of our trip...by then all our heineys hurt anyway! She watched lots of DVD's in the car, drew on her magnadoodle, looked at her books, slept and was a good girl all around. She certainly LOVED when we'd go to our hotel and she could run around and jump and climb and stretch her legs and she thoroughly enjoyed the pool at two of our three hotels when we swam!
11. Trevor, a mostly patient, great hubby. He let me drive the whole time, offered to take over periodically but didn't push the issue when I said I was fine. I told him it would save some arguments if I just drove because I am a terrible backseat driver!
12. The 70 mph speed limit between St. Louis and Memphis. Of course that meant we drove at about 80 mph the whole way like the rest of the traffic (except for those that blazed past us of course, there's always a few of those!)
13. Coming home...a great part of any vacation is always coming home. I was fortunate to not have to work for two days because we came back Friday night and I worked the following Monday. Trevor was not so lucky since he works weekends, he worked Saturday morning, 8am. I loved having a whole 5 days to spend with Trevor and Emma and it was difficult this week getting back into the normal routine where our time together is not quite as abundant. I quite honestly have felt out of sorts and on the verge of tears the entire week off and on.