I took Andrew on a short trip around the world when we went to the Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park In St. Louis.

The festival is the region’s largest multi-culture celebration featuring more than 40 food booths, non-stop dance and music, arts and crafts, and an international bazaar with unique gifts. It takes place in August each year.

The original forecast called for partly cloudy skies with possible rain showers later in the day, at least that was what the predicted when I left the house. I would find out that the weather outlook changed when I got there.

Where to Park for A Large Festival

I know my way around St. Louis and I came to the park through the back way on Tower Grove Avenue. I drove into the middle of area of park and found a backup. I decided that I would be better off finding nearby street parking then navigating the park.

To make it easy to find the vehicle, I faced the car away from festival traffic and parked on the main street of Tower Grove. When we were done for the day, I was happy that I did since it was easy to find after wearing down from all the festivities.

After parking, we walked down the street the few blocks to the festival grounds. My son wanted to check out the arts and craft vendors, which would lead to him searching for a possible toy. He could also want to leave early after this.

I redirected him, I asked if he was hungry and he said yes and I told him lets go check out the food vendors first. Luckily, we travel a lot and have eaten many different types of culinary delights so finding something we both liked was fairly easy. I chose fried foods, not the healthiest, but I knew if I didn’t we would deal with spillage with the paper trays they use. If I had my husband with me I would have been more adventurous.

Fried Bolivian empanada with a crunchy outer crust and spicy chicken is what we had first. Luckily most of these fried foods came in pairs or were on the larger side so we could either split it or we each had or own. This really worked well for us.

As we walked on he came across some Chinese chicken on a stick and wanted that so I purchased it for him and he ate it all.  After having a few snacks we headed to do crafts.

Sister Cities and Macaroni

We headed to the St. Louis Sister Cities tent, which represented different Sister Cities of St. Louis.

St. Louis is a Sister City to quite a few cities throughout the world from Bogor, Indonesia to Bologna, Italy to Saint-Louis, Senegal.

We did some crafts representing their different cultures. You can also get a passport and have a sticker from each cities table.

At the Italian table, Andrew spent the most time using magic markers and macaroni to make designs on a paper plate. Glue and magic markers, what fun for him, of course, he managed to get some magic marker on my shirt and pants. I will have to remember to wear older clothes next time when it comes to crafts.

Don’t Forget to Bring Bags to a Festival

Also, I made another mistake. I didn’t bring a bag or even wear shorts with lots of pockets to carry things in. After doing the craft I asked if they had bags, they said no, but pointed me to the nearby St. Louis Art Museum tent that had them.

There is always a complication. First, you had to spin a wheel to learn about a culture. Andrew spun the wheel and it landed on a woman weaving a palm frond. She asked if this was Tahiti or Paris, we both agreed it was Tahiti, which was correct. Interesting side note, Tahiti is a French Polynesian island.

The bags were really cool. You could fold it up into itself and zip together onto a key ring. So now I will have to bring this with us on trips, just to have a bag available if we need it.

The Rain Comes

Next we headed to the Religions of the World tent. They had a display on Jewish culture and we discussed the different Jewish holidays together for a bit. Then, I heard the pitter-patter of raindrops. The rain was coming early. We were in a tent, away from it, but not the main craft one. I decided for us to stay there a while until it cleared. We were too far away from the car to make it logical to go out into it without getting completely soaked.

Andrew was good about this since we ended up there for a while. At one point he used a juice bottle to catch drips from the top of the tent. He had gained the idea from another bored kid. This pre-occupied the both of them for a bit. Then the top of the tent begins to overfill with water so some of the volunteers begin to use umbrellas to push up on the tent to force the water out creating small waterfalls. Rain can be quite entertaining for a kid at times.

Finding a Snake

Finally, it cleared. He wanted to check out the vendor craft tents and that was what we did next. Some of the stuff was expensive. Then we came across a multi-colored stitched long snake filled with little foam balls I think. He really liked it; I thought it was well crafted, too. So we chose to get it. I would never have gotten this as an adult but it doesn’t mean I might have thought about it, but with a kid, you can get stuff like this. It is a fun memory that will last past this day.

Release the Dragon

We wandered around a bit and came across a Chinese dragon performance on one of the stages. In one of the comic books that I read to him Iron Man uses a Chinese dragon to foil a villain so I connected this story to what we were watching. The dragon moving up and down and all over and the dancers moving around preoccupied him for a while.

My opinion on festival entertainment, I feel it is easier to just let these things happen as opposed to looking for the performance times and making sure to be there for it. If you plan it out, it is liable that he is not in the mood. Some spontaneity is always better. This doesn’t always work if you really want to see a performance, but a day with passing showers, it is better to let things flow as they may I think.

I was hoping to do more crafts with him, but I was having trouble finding the children’s creative craft workshop tent that was listed on the program, but it was beginning to sprinkle once more. A few drops, then bigger ones. We were close to where the car was and I thought it was time to go back home, we had been there already a few hours.

Even with the rain, this was still a worthwhile activity. We were out of the house for a while and he experienced some international culture. Hopefully drier weather next year!