St. Louis Weekend





Matt and I have another summer getaway coming up this week, so I thought that this would be a good time to finally share with you the St. Louis getaway we took Fourth of July weekend.  It's a month late, I know, but at least I'm getting around to posting about it :)

On our way to St. Louis, we stopped in neighboring Alton, Il.  It's a small, quaint town thirty minutes outside of St. Louis.

While in Alton, we stayed at the Beall House Mansion.  I'll share more about this part of our trip in my next post.



After checking out of the B&B, we grabbed lunch and crossed the river into St. Louis.  We couldn't check into our hotel until 3:00, so we headed to the Gateway Arch for a three hour wait to the top of the arch. 

You'd think I was enduring the three hour wait with a silly 8 year old instead of a 28 year old : )

Clearly we entertained ourselves while we waited.

 

It was a tight squeeze to the top of the arch.....

......but when we finally reached the top.....

  

......we had a nice view.

After our visit to the arch, we took a five minute walk to our hotel room.....

......where we also had a really nice view:)

We didn't skimp on the hotel room, but it was so worth it!  We only stayed in St. Louis for one night, so we splurged and got an arch view room at the Hyatt for $200 a night.  The hotel has recently been renovated, making it much nicer than Indy's downtown Hyatt, but the best part about our room was the view!

     

Once we got settled into our hotel, we walked one block to Caleco's for dinner.

The food was really good, and the portions were large.  Needless to say, we had leftovers to take back to our room.

One of the reasons we went to St. Louis for the Fourth was because they were having their annual Fair St. Louis under the Gateway Arch. 



 This annual event is a huge American celebration where the city celebrates the Fourth of July under the arch with a weekend fair, air shows, evening fireworks and evening concerts.  And would you believe all of that is free!  That's right, there's no admission!  The only thing you pay for is food at the local vendors, but if you want you can bring your own food and drinks and have a picnic under the arch.  It was crazy-hot the weekend that we went, so we skipped the picnic. 

At the fair, Matt enjoyed fresh kettle corn, but I couldn't resist the funnel cake:)

 

We couldn't help but notice how much flooding St. Louis actually got prior to our trip.  It's hard to see in the picture, but the water level was up several feet from where it should have been.



A view of the fair and concert from our hotel room. This year's free concerts were the Steve Miller Band, Maroon 5 and Montgomery Gentry.

  

It was really hot and muggy while we were in St. Louis, so we decided to watch the fireworks from our hotel room. 

Our room definitely had the better view, and the air conditioning was a bonus :)



After waking up to this view.....

.....we went down to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast.  We got a really good deal and were able to get "all you can eat breakfast for two" for only $5 in our hotel package.

Matt, being a man who always gets his money's worth, had two full plates of breakfast :) I'm never a big fan of buffet food, but this was a definitely a step up from a typical buffet.  It was fully stocked with all you could possibly want for breakfast, including waffle and omelet stations. 

Before heading home we visited Busch Stadium and Forest Park. 

We had a lot of fun during our weekend getaway, and the entire trip was really easy to plan using the Explore St. Louis website.  If you ever plan a trip to St. Louis trip, I recommend you visit that website.