St. Louis, what a gem
After Nashville, TN, we knew we wanted to head to Colorado. Looking at a map, it’s more than a one-day drive, so we’d have to stop over somewhere — but where exactly? Believe it or not, our original plan was to drive through Oklahoma and stay in a teepee outside of Tulsa 🙃. Needless to say, I’m really glad I had a chat with my good friend Eric who said, “you gotta go to St. Louis, no brainer, I’ll send you all the things to do and introduce you to my friends”. And that was that — teepee will have to wait 😎
All the art
Not knowing anything about St. Louis, the one thing we were blown away by was the amount of art and culture the city had. We stumbled upon The Grove on our first night as we were searching for food — so glad we did! All the art lining the streets made it such an experience — and this is just a small sample of the creativity we felt from STL.
And get the Pork Steak @BEAST Butcher & Block —
— you won’t reget it (hot tip from the butcher himself).
A few of our favorites
Remember those friends Eric was talking about? They’re Jeff and Randy — two brothers, STL natives, super rad guys and they have an awesome shop on Cherokee St. — STL Style House! Its a must-stop if you’re in St. Louis.
Flowers and Weeds — super cool flower and gardening shop across the street from STL Style House. They have SO many plants filling their inside studio space and outdoor garden. We definitely got lost in there for a while.
Oliver’s Coffee And Flower Bar — our local coffee shop while at our Airbnb in Maplewood. Super chill spot, plenty of space to sit and they sell fresh flowers. Crystal highly recommends the Hot Rose Latté!
Broadway Oyster Bar — well known stop and wow, they didn’t disappoint! Our only regret — we wish we got the big bowl of gumbo! We also ate it too fast and didn’t take a picture of it 🤦♂️, but believe us, it was good! We also got some fried oysters, lobster po’boy and a bloody mary, even though it was nighttime — so worth it.
Soulard Farmers Market - huge farmers market that has been going on for over 200 years! So many stands to check out — fresh produce, baked goods (we recommend the ginger molasses cookies from the Amish bakery!) and plenty of hot food to choose from too.
By far, one of our most favorite days was catching the sunset at Forest Park, Art Hill overlooking the basin. Caught a perfect summer day out there. The grass hill is a perfect spot to lounge out and take in the moment.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a complete trip to STL without a stop at The Arch (which is in a National Park, fyi). Awesome park to take a stroll in — also pretty cool that its right off the Mississippi river!
And there were soo many more cool spots — let us know if you’re headed to St. Louis and we’ll fill you in!
An epic last day
On our last day in St. Louis, we were blessed with another hot summer day — we knew we had to check out the Missouri Botanical Gardens. We’ve been to quite a few different botanical gardens over the years, but I’d have to say, this one was pretty magical. We took our time exploring the Climatron (dome-looking greenhouse), which was so much fun, but the rest of the gardens are huge and just as awesome. We were also lucky enough for Crystal’s friend Grace to join us, who just so happened to be in town at the same time!
As the botanical gardens closed up for the day, I took a look at the recommendations Eric, Jeff and Randy had given us and noticed the ONE thing they all said we had to do in STL was go to the City Museum — and we forgot! So we quickly looked up tickets, got the last timeslots and headed over. They weren’t kidding — it’s such a weird, bizzarre, amazing place that everyone should experience. We had so much fun climbing around on all the structures we’ll probably have to create a separate post about it — the place is HUGE and never ending (caves, 10-story slides, planes, ladders, worlds largest pencil, etc, etc, etc), but here are a few snaps from our day.
