Matt Alvino

Fun, engaging, and free, experience for kids and adults. I found myself as interested in some of the stations as my 3.5 year old. Be sure to check it all out. There are nooks and crannies that are easy to miss. I especially like the farming area outside.

Many of the exhibits are showing their age. Pretty hard to keep things looking new when there are thousands of hands playing with them everyday.

If you park at the main entrance there is a decent price to park. You can park at the Planetarium for free.

A good convention center. Compact enough, naming convention for rooms makes it a little hard to navigate. Main hallways are a little narrow which makes a large conference feel packed. Presents well, but sort of boring ascetically.

Drunken noodles were great. Very savory and just got better as I went. I went with medium spicy and it wasn't bad at all, I could have gone high spice easily. The pad Thai wasn't as good as I am used to at other Thai places, just seemed to be missing something.

The inside is a little dank, but fine. Good for just a casual Thai experience. Service was friendly and attentive.

Definitely off the beaten path to get here. Located in Kaskaskia, which is an Illinois enclave on the Missouri side of the Mississippi. That alone was worth the experience for me, but it was fun to say I saw the Liberty Bell of the West. Not much else to talk about around here. It's a mostly barren old town that, I assume due to multiple heavy floods, drove everyone but a few farmers to higher ground. The streets around here are still organized in a grid, just only a handful of actual buildings on them.

The church next door is exceptionally pretty for the area.