On June 18th Toni and Andrea arrived in Chicago. Staying at the Swiss Hotel for a couple of nights to spend time for wine and dine and of course some shopping. Friday morning they received a rental car and drove to St Louis.
Under my perfect guidance and explanation over the phone, they crossed the bridge over the Missouri river in to St Charles. Taking the first exit after the bridge they were looking for a Shell gas station to stop and send me a text so I can go and pick them up. A small problem occurred. They could not find this Shell station, because it doesn't exist anymore. It changed a long time ago to a Mobil gas station and I didn't know. Anyway, we finally meet up and I ended up being laughed at for the next few days for my little mistake!!
Needless to say that the next 9 days were wonderful and a happy time for us. The weather was, with a couple exceptions, acceptable nice, sunny but a bit hot.
They had no particular agenda so we spent our time, in order of priority, with playing Hay Day, golfing, dining, drinking, sightseeing, watching the World Cup, family outing, some relaxing and a Segway tour.
Here are pictures from a great time
Starting with Hay Day
As you see, we played that game when ever we had a chance
Golfing
After spending some time on the driving range
we played 9 holes on 2 different golf courses 5 out of 9 days
Toni was ringing the bell to let the group behind us know to go ahead and play
He pulled so hard that the pendelum inside flow off!
Luckily we didn't get hit.
Dining
Of course I tried to serve some nice food since I am a retired executive chef
and It seemed to me that my guests enjoyed every bite of it.
I dont really have some pictures
I made sure they won't miss there Zopf when being over here
Drinking
Bud light was the main beverage while they were here
Some Prosecco was on hand too
Sightseeing
We had only one day set aside for sightseeing
and checking out the famous St Louis arch was a must.
Andrea and Toni went to the top and send me some picture from the great view of St Louis
View to the right withe the Edward Jones football stadium
To the left you see the new Busch baseball stadium
this view is straight ahead from the top of the arch
That day we also strolled through town and checked out the new stadium village
World Cup
It just so happens that the world cup from Brazil was on and we had to watch some game
of importance (nearly all of them).
One of them on June 25th we could not miss!!
Switzerland against Honduras 3 : 0
Shaqiri with a Hattrick
The announcers called him Schassiri! very funny!
Donna surprised us all with some Swiss World Cup shirts.
This added a lot to the sensational ambiance.
Family Outing
We were setting Thursday aside to go and visit Daniel, Gina and Eliana
at Ackerman acres.
We had a great time with good food, plenty of drinks and
cooling off in the pool
Relaxing
Really? We had not much time left for relaxing but still enough
for some smoke breaks or nice cool cocktail.
To me they are looking relaxed!!
Segway
We decided to go on a Segway tour in the Forest Park where 1904 was the World Fair.
Donna organized it and I was a little bit nervous because this was new to me.
I never was on a Segway. In fact, only Andrea had some experience in driving
one of these two wheelers.
Actually I was nervous for nothing. We had an excellent teacher and in less than
ten minutes all of us were comfortable with the machines and drove around like experts.
This is our great teacher Mike
looking tense the first two minutes
we are observing the baby steps on a segway from Donna
five minutes later she was confident and cruising around
This definitely was one of my most enjoyable experience
and I will definitely do it again
It is great to know that Andrea promised to bring Toni to come to see us again!
( NEXT YEAR)
