We had spring break at the beginning of the month. For weeks leading up to it we'd get asked occasionally where we were going. "Nowhere" was the solid answer. We had never gone anywhere for Luke's spring breaks and neither of us grew up being "go somewhere for spring break" people. Senior year of high school I went with my winter guard to Milwaukee for a competition and I think my family went to Chicago my freshman year of high school but that's all I can remember.
Then two weeks before spring break Matt's brother and SIL asked him if we wanted to go to St. Louis with them. I initially panicked. I couldn't throw together a trip in two weeks! The logistics alone were overwhelming to think about! This was also leading up to the boys' birthday party and I was fine tuning some details for a summer trip. BUT THEN...I spent a bit going through it through my mind and figured out an itinerary we could make work. Two days later I was booking a hotel. The next day I was canceling said hotel to book a different hotel. Bought some tickets for things. Figured out a camping trip for this summer and booked a driving pass for a national park (THREE trip plannings happening at once). And a week later we left.
Matt worked 4-10s so has a day off every week but his day off for spring break week was a Thursday so we only had a weekend. A normal length weekend. So we headed out after he got off work (and Luke was out of school) on Friday. It's about a 5½ hour drive without stops, which we managed to make just one (LOVE a trip we can do on one tank of gas).
I knew with most of our destinations being downtown that I wanted to stay downtown so we could mostly walk everywhere. My goal was to park the car on Friday and not move it until we checked out on Sunday. Which is exactly what we did. I don't mind walking around cities, I MUCH prefer that to dealing with most parking situations!
We stayed at the Embassy Suites downtown, which is where Matt's brother and his family were staying. It was a bit pricey BUT we had a separate bedroom from the boys' pull out couch which meant we weren't all going to bed when they went to bed (which basically meant I didn't have to read my books in the bathroom). I believe this was a converted department store (based on the picture hanging in our bathroom) which was a fun detail. The ceiling was SUPER high. The biggest downside is that the light blocking curtains didn't move (do rich people not like sleeping in? Is that how they are rich?) and it was a good thing we brought some chip clips for snacks because we used those to hold our curtains shut so we weren't up with the sun.
The BEST part about the Embassy Suites, besides it's location, is that it has FANTASTIC complimentary breakfast and we are now ruined for all other "free" hotel breakfasts. We texted Matt's brother and SIL from it the first morning and told them we were just never leaving breakfast. Matt says that alone was worth the cost. I ate a PILE of amazing pineapple and amazing potatoes and that's before we found the bakery bar! There were also made to order omelets but I don't eat eggs so that was no value to me.
There was a pool and hot tub and the boys insisted on swimming and we all put on our suits to go one night but it was INSANELY busy when we were there. Loud. Crazy. It made the City Museum look calm. We didn't last there more than 20 minutes (and I never got in the water) but Luke still said it was one of his favorite parts of the trip.
What We Did
The number one thing Matt & I wanted to do in Saint Louis was go up in the Arch. We had both been there before as kids and knew we wanted to take our boys. I booked our Arch tickets as soon as I had a hotel booked. That was an absolute. We had tickets for 10:50 for Saturday morning so that was the first thing we did after breakfast. I love walking around a downtown and it was a nice .7 mile walk. We actually met one of my sisters at the base of the Arch for about 5 minutes. I had been told she was going with her family that weekend. Forgot all about it. Then mentioned to my Mom that we were going and she reminded me. So it was a lovely bonus that we got to see my sister, her husband, and their 2 kids, very briefly!
We took a lot of pictures and then went through the museum under the Arch. It had been redone since my last visit (in 2003 although I'm not sure we visited the museum on that trip) so I didn't remember much of it besides the stagecoach and covered wagon. I certainly could have spent more time there learning about the westward expansion (a topic that greatly interested me as a kid, probably due to our visits to the Arch) AND the building of the Arch but the boys had a limited attention span. They KNEW there would be cousins later in the day. So we walked through the museum, visited the gift shop, and then got in line to go up.
We took more pictures outside, it had warmed up to be very comfortable!, and the sky was my ideal for taking pictures outside - bright blue with wispy clouds! Beautiful! Then we walked the .7 miles back to the hotel. I picked up some sandwiches at Snarf's Sandwiches (I did not know this was a chain until I just looked it up, well we don't have them here!) across from the hotel on our way back and ate them in our room.
Our second big destination for the day was the famed City Museum. This was another comfortable .7 mile walk in the opposite direction. Matt's brother, SIL, their 5 kids, his parents, his sister, BIL, and their 8 kids were already there. We got there at 1pm and were immediately overwhelmed. We had hear RAVES about this place from....everyone. It was incredibly busy and I told Matt I would have been fine walking right back out the door and not been concerned with losing the costs of our tickets.
However, we stuck it out.
His little 4 year old body fit everywhere. Technically we did too but it got TIGHT for the adults and there was some contorting that needed to be done. I almost had a panic attack following him down one tunnel that got pretty tight and there were people in front and behind me so there was no getting out of it. I had to calmly talk my way through that one. Also, nothing is one way (besides the staff regulated slides) so you could run into a person coming at you at any point and then there is probably a trail of people behind either one of you.
Suffice it to say...it was not my favorite place. We found cousins and did some things inside and out. There was a preschool section we found that Sam really enjoyed and I could watch him from the ground without needing to follow him. Matt did a section with Luke and other family that Sam was too short for then. And Sam & I did a longer slide right before we left that was fun. But neither Matt or myself was disappointed to leave after 3½ hours. We decided while we were there to go to Mass that evening instead of in the morning. Which gave us an excuse to leave AND helped out our Sunday. So wins all around. (Our time at the Arch in the morning got 20 pages in the trip photo book while the City Museum got 5. Partially because of our concerns with not losing a kid but also because of how much we liked certain things...)
After another phenomenal breakfast (with cousins!) we headed to the zoo (free besides parking!) while the rest of our group went to Mass and finally saw the Arch. Our priorities when visiting other zoos are always animals we don't have at ours. That means we don't need to see giraffes, lions, or tigers. We always want to see lemurs and anything else we don't have. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day and the zoo was busy but so much space so not as bad as the City Museum. After the lemurs we tried to see the flamingos (not out yet for the year) but then did see gorillas, a very active polar bear (my favorite!), and brown bears.
We met up with the rest of the family to do the River section where we saw elephants, rhinos, and hippos (among other animals but those were the highlights). If you didn't do the math above, we had 23 people in our group which is a lot of kids to keep track of. Nobody got lost!
We were at the zoo almost 3 hours before we had to head for home. Matt had to work first thing in the morning on Monday and the drive was almost 6 hours. We took a niece with us since her college spring break didn't line up with the rest of her family's grade/high school one. Got to see the Arch again as we drove back through St. Louis and headed for home! And, besides a traffic hold up, we made it with just one stop again!
It was a whirlwind, about 40 hours in St. Louis, including two nights of sleeping. We saw three big attractions - the Arch, the City Museum, and the zoo. We only had to buy food twice thanks to all the snacks we brought, the sandwiches our kids barely ate, and, maybe, taking a bit extra yogurt from the hotel breakfast.
The highlight for me was getting to take our boys someplace I had very fond memories of visiting with my family as a kid. Saint Louis, with the Smokey Mountains, seemed like a regular vacation destinations for us. I went to Saint Louis with them in 1991, 1993 (when the stairs by the Arch were flooded!), with my winter guard in 2001, and my family again in 2003. There is just something about the Arch that is SO FOND to me and I loved getting to see it and go up inside again.
This was the third vacation destination from my childhood we've revisited in the past year (following Savannah and The U.S. Space and Rocket Museum) and there is something time wrinkling about it all. I visited all of those places in high school or college with my family so the memories are somewhat fresh. The me that visited them doesn't seem that long ago from the me that is now visiting as the parent. It reassuring to still find magic in these places and hope that I'm helping my kids make wonderful family travel memories too!
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