My family and I just got home from a 3 day weekend in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is one of my favorite major metropolitan areas, possibly my favorite. There's just so much to do, and it's relatively inexpensive to do it.
This is the first time we've taken our boys to St. Louis, so this was a very kid friendly trip. We stayed at a Drury Inn, near Forest Park. Forest Park is a huge inner city park on the west end of St. Louis. There are multiple attractions within Forest Park, including an Art Museum, History Museum and an Opera House, but the 2 attractions we hit were the St. Louis Science Center and the St. Louis Zoo.
The St. Louis Science Center is a free admission Science Center, and is connected via sky walk to the McDonnell Planetarium. There are tons of cool, hands-on exhibits, but the best for me was the dinosaur exhibit. They had 2 "life sized" robotic dinosaurs. A T-Rex stalking over a wounded Triceratops. You could spend hours if you tried to do everything at the Science Center. We spent about 2 hours there, hitting the highlights.
The St. Louis Zoo is awesome! It's every bit as cool as Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, and an easier walk. Also, it's free!!! We spent about 7 hours at the zoo...my older son is an animal nut. He spent an hour in the Insectarium. But, there were plenty of places to sit and rest if we got tired, and lots of different types of food to keep us energized. The highlight for me was the Asian Elephant exhibit. They had 5-6 females, a huge male (I've never seen such a big Asian Elephant), and 2 babies (ages 2 and 3). They were out and active when we went by. The last time we visited St. Louis was 10 years ago, and the exhibit wasn't done at that time, so it was neat to see it done.
As far as food goes, our hotel had a great, hot breakfast. If you ever get a chance to stay at a Drury Inn, take it...it was a very nice hotel. For dinner, the first night, we ate at a Steak and Shake. None of us had ever eaten there before. I know it's a chain, but it was really good. I liked the Steakburger, and the fries were delicious. I'm told the shakes were good too...I just had a Sprite.
The eating highlight was Bartolino's Restaurant, which was attached to the hotel. It's an Italian Place, but not a chain. I think there 2 or 3 in St. Louis, but that's it. The food was absolutely delicious, and there was plenty of it. My youngest son had a pizza, and it was one of the best pizzas I've ever tasted. I had a spaghetti with Italian Sausage. I was expecting Italian Sausage meatballs, but it was actually 2 full Italian Sausages...my mouth is watering now just thinking about it. Definitely a place to stop if you are in St. Louis.
Finally, this morning we went to Mass at the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis. This was definitely the most ornate and beautiful church I've ever been in. Sadly, it was only 1/4 full or so. It's enormous, so the singing and everything echoed a lot, making it seem even more empty than it was. I enjoyed going to mass there, but it made me appreciate the smaller size and fuller pews of my local parish.
We had a great trip. I doubt it will be so long before we go back.
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I'll second the suggestion for the Drury Inn (as well as the Science Center and the Zoo). We stayed at a Drury Inn on the west side of St. Louis (on the 'skirts, though) when we vacationed there for a week a couple years ago and really enjoyed it; I wish there was one everywhere that we vacationed. As for Steak & Shake, yes, it's pretty yummy for fast food (on par with Sonic, if you've tried that—if not, you should) and yes, the shakes are really good. There used to be one in CR, but it's gone now (I blame you, since you never patronized them). Oh, and those baby elephants were just weeks old (well, one was weeks old and one was a year and weeks old) when we were there—adorable and simply amazing.
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