My stepdaughter E had a great time recently in St. Louis. Here are her recommendations/impressions!
- – a stay at the Renaissance, formerly the Statler, which is the oldest hotel in downtown St. Louis.
- – Downtown St. Louis is beautiful with 200 year old buildings that looked like they haven’t been touched. We walked into the train station, an Art Nouveau masterpiece, and I was astounded at how well it had been preserved.
- – Drive around the Soulard, the old French district. It is extremely similar to New Orleans and in fact, we just missed the big Mardi Gras celebration going on this weekend. Soulard has lots of cute blues and jazz bars.
- – We went to a great Thai restaurant, The King and I in the Tower Grove neighborhood. Grand in Tower Grove seems to have a long strip of ethnic restaurants, Ethopian, Middle Eastern, Korean, etc, all in a row. After dinner we went to the Gelateria del Leone where they had homemade gelato and coffee. It was outstanding.
- -On Monday, we tried to go to a cafe in Lafayette Square, but unfortunately it was closed. Lafeyette Square has big beautiful houses that are probably from around the late 19th century.
- – lunch at Pappy’s Smokehouse, in Midtown, near SLU, known for the brisket. It was some solid BBQ, but the best thing was probably the fried corn on the cob. It tasted like popcorn.
- – We drove around the Central West End, near Forest Park, where private gated drives were filled with century old mansions. We stopped in a mystery book store called the Big Sleep.
- – We finished the day in a new trendy area called Cherokee. We had some serious mochas ( a hot chocolate drink) at the Mudd Cafe on Cherokee street (the food looked really good too). The street was lined with vintage shops and serious taco stands that I definitely want to hit up when I go back.
TakeBetsywithyou 