The Great Hunter and I were able to mark off two items from our Mondays list that have been there since pre-covid; the Aquarium at Union Station and the St. Louis Wheel. As an added bonus, we included lunch at Crown Candy Kitchen. We took advantage of the nicer, warmer (for January) weather and got to enjoy time with my youngest grandson too.

Union Station has been a St. Louis landmark for almost 130 years with the first train pulling into the station in 1894. It stayed an active train station until 1978 after which it was reborn as a shopping-dining destination. In 2019 it was reborn a second time housing the St. Louis Aquarium, the St. Louis Wheel, a Ropes course, a Carousel and restaurants. Even bigger boys are mesmerized by the fish, or maybe he’s just wishing he had a fishing pole.One of the things the Grand found most fun was the carousel. He rode around and around making faces at the Great Hunter, but to be honest, the Great Hunter started it.I hadn’t originally bought tickets to ride the Wheel because I didn’t realize all the seats were enclosed gondolas (why I wouldn’t have realized that, I don’t know…can you imagine open-air cars 200 feet in the air?)

Since the carousel was right next to the Wheel, the Great Hunter surprised the Grand and me with tickets to ride it. The Grand originally looked up and said he didn’t want to ride it, but after he boarded the gondola and it started moving, he was fine. Two Hundred feet in the air, we had a great view of the surrounding area.
We decided to end our Monday (on Tuesday) excursion with lunch at Crown Candy Kitchen, another St. Louis landmark.

Crown Candy Kitchen was opened in 1913 by Harry Karandzieff and his best friend Pete Jugaloff. They brought their confectionary skills from Greece, along with a dream of providing a friendly family environment to enjoy their delicious creations. During the early 50’s Harry’s son George took the business over and built the business into what it is today. Now George’s three sons – Andy, Tommy and Mike run the business with a little help from the 4th generation.

We ate our corned beef sandwiches even though Crown Candy is famous for its gigantic bacon sandwiches and I was so tempted to buy some of the handmade chocolates that were in the display cases. We settled for sharing a dish of chocolate ice cream. I am not a huge fan of chocolate ice cream but this was by far, the best creamy chocolate ice cream I’ve ever eaten. And the Grand loved it.

Crown Candy was also featured in June on the Cooking Channel’s Restaurant Recovery. You can see the episode airing on Discovery+.