Waiting in St Louis

Yesterday we moved from balmy California across two time zones to the frozen tundra that is Minnesota. A restless and hot night in San Francisco in a cheap hotel room (with obligatory paper-thin walls) listening to a drunken tirade from a woman in the room next door. She settled down about 4 in the morning, by which time I was past caring.
Earlier in the evening we'd eaten tomato soup from hollowed-out loaves of sourdough bread and walked through a city of $2 shops on Fisherman's Wharf, caught a tram up the undulating streets and walked a mile back to our hotel, having completely misjudged where it was. The steep leafy streets and elegant houses are quite a contrast to the grubby concrete of Anaheim and the purposeful glitz of Las Vegas.
Our flight to St Paul went via St Louis and sitting in St Louis airport we realised that neither of us has a clue where in the US St Louis actually is. Do you ? Couple this with a growing uncertainty about which day it is and you have the perfect holiday.
The wait in St Louis went on and on, and there was no information. When we eventually boarded our pencil-thin aircraft the pilot apologised for the delay. President Bush had decided to fly through St Louis earlier in the afternoon and all flights were grounded or left circling 50 miles away until he was gone.
Our budget hotel in St Paul is an old railway station, complete with rails running through the lobby and a beautiful vaulted ceiling. No elevator however, so at midnight the four of us had to lug all our luggage up the stairs to our room. No mean feat having not slept the night before.
The kids are taking travelling in their stride, finding our way around airports, organising their own stuff, waiting patiently when the President jumps our queue, being adaptable and creative with a deluge of new experiences. Me, I just seem to get get more curmudgeonly as the years go on, though in a benign way I think.