I didn’t really know too much about St Louis before going – if I’m honest it was more a way for me to tick off another US state and get my closer to my goal of visiting all 50 – but it ended up being a fantastic weekend trip, and a city I highly recommend visiting! With only 2 days to explore we definitely only uncovered the first layer of what this city has to offer, but it was a great taster and a perfect introduction to this surprisingly awesome destination.
Day 1 Morning – City Museum
When googling things to do in St Louis, the City Museum comes up as a top attraction for kids of all ages, so as a 27 year old who refuses to admit that I’m a grown up, I had to go. The museum is essentially an enormous playground, full of old abandoned items like a school bus, planes, a planetarium dome, and arcade games, as well as items repurposed into climbing frames and slides. There is no map, so you just explore the myriad of rooms and floors at your own pace, undoubtedly going round in circles and getting lost in an attempt to find all the nooks you haven’t seen yet. There are cave systems, castle turrets, skate park ramps, tunnels, bridges, and so many slides and chutes, including a 10 story spiral slide! It was a swelteringly hot day, and in my short shorts and strappy top I was not suitably attired for optimum sliding, so a top tip is to wear something longer which covers more skin, so as to avoid having to scoot yourself down at various points along the way. The gift shop also sells knee pads, for those big kids among us whose ability to avoid aches and pains and bumps and bruises isn’t quite what it used to be! The rooftop entrance has to be purchased as a separate ticket to the main museum – this is where the ferris wheel is, and the most fun slide of the day in my opinion, but there’s not all that much up there and so if you’re short on time or cash, it wouldn’t be the end of the world to skip this section. We definitely could’ve spent a lot longer at the City Museum as we didn’t see it all, and if travelling with kids it could definitely be a whole day excursion, but we felt sufficient slides were slid and knees were knocked and we wanted to explore more of the city after our childish but entertaining morning.
Day 1 Afternoon – St Louis Zoo
In general, when travelling, I try not to do things that I could do at home, so while I love zoos and aquariums, unless they’re particularly unique I tend to choose alternatives. In this case, I’m extremely glad I didn’t – St Louis zoo is awesome! Our Uber driver informed us it’s the second best zoo in the US, and while I think it depends on whose ranking you’re looking at, it’s definitely up there near the top. And best of all, it’s entirely free! You do have to book tickets in advance to get a time slot, and we ended up going later in the day due to availability, but they are open fairly late in the summer months so we still had a good amount of time, which was necessary because the place is enormous. We saw penguins and lemurs and giraffes and leopards and snakes and ostriches and sealions and capybaras and zebras and polar bears and elephants and orangutans and so many incredible animals. But the absolute highlight had to be the hippos. Instead of just natural ponds and lakes like I’ve seen at other zoos with hippos, this enclosure was built so that you could see underwater, and the hippos were happily swimming in big loops along the entire length of the windows, coming right up close for the perfect view – and the perfect selfie. We probably spent about a third of our entire time at the zoo just at the hippo bit, and I have zero regrets.
Day 1 Evening – Ballpark Village
We definitely lucked out on this one. One of my fellow travellers is big on food (if you’ve met me you know that I am categorically not a foodie so if you’re looking for international cuisine suggestions this is not the blog for you, sorry), so we let her have free reign in deciding where to eat for the whole weekend. She’d found a BBQ place with a few restaurants across the city, and while we had planned to hit the one closest to the zoo, we figured that actually the downtown restaurant was probably more in the right direction of our hotel, so we made a last minute change. After the super hot day we thought inside would be better than outside seating, but on arrival we discovered the outside was actually the rooftop, and you can’t pass that up so up we went. It turns out this place was directly across the road from Busch Stadium, the home of the St Louis Cardinals baseball team, and our table was right on the edge of the rooftop facing the huge screen showing the game currently in progress against the Kansas City Royals. We sat, with our briskets and mac and cheese, with the sun setting behind the Arch, and watched America’s favourite pastime, a series of last minute change in plans leading to a perfect ending to a great first day in St Louis.
Day 2 Morning – Gateway Arch National Park
Of course, it’s impossible to visit St Louis without visiting the Gateway Arch. What I didn’t know though is that you can actually ride up to the top of it! I figured it was just a huge sculpture, but nope, there’s a viewing platform. Again due to our lack of planning we were only able to get tickets on the day for much later than we were planning, but at least there was some same day availability. We ended up exploring the museum section, which is free, and the National Park surrounding the Arch in the morning, and then coming back after lunch for our tram ride to the top. It seems weird that Gateway Arch is a National Park rather than a National Memorial or a National Monument, and apparently even the National Parks Service agrees! But whatever the name, it truly is a great attraction, and gets me closer to my goal of visiting all 63 National Parks, so I’m not complaining. We met a very friendly Park ranger while taking photos outside, who gave us some great tips for the best shots, and then met him again at the top a few hours later where he recognised us and gave us even more tips for the best photos, so the credit for some of these goes to him! Walking down to the old courthouse also gave some excellent photo opportunities, and allowed us to explore a little more of downtown in the process, including city sculpture park.
Day 2 Afternoon – Metropolis
Okay okay, so I lied, we didn’t spend a full 48 hours in St Louis because we also had to drive home within that time. But we made sure to hit up one last stop during our road trip back to Nashville. I may no longer have a Superman poster up on my wall, but I can now say I’ve been to his home town of Metropolis. It is pretty much just a huge statue and a relatively small gift shop. But it’s Superman! So I had to.
