Meet me in St. Louis

Philip and I decided to go to St. Louis last weekend on a quick, last minute, and I mean - book everything Thursday night at midnight, last minute - trip. We quickly packed after getting home from work on Friday and headed out. It was only about a 4 hour road trip, but it felt like we went a world away. My parents lived in St. Louis for a few months, so they were helpful in discovering all the hidden gems of the city. We also utilized groupon.com to find a few last minute deals. (And we found some great ones!)

Saturday morning we headed to an adorable little restaurant called The London Tea Room. (It made me want to immediately move to the UK.) I had a delicious scone with cream and jam and a chocolate Chai tea latte - so yummy!

There was no way we could go to St. Louis and not visit the arch. It was my first time going up the arch and I felt like I was entering an alien space ship. The view of the city was gorgeous though!

After we went up in the arch, we walked around the museum, stopped in the general store underneath the Arch where we got candy sticks and played checkers (of course!) and then headed to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner. We then headed to this adorable little Gelato store downtown called Gelateria on Washington Ave..

After we had satisfied our sweet tooth, we headed to the Aquarium inside the City Museum downtown. This was one of the coolest things we did and I would encourage anyone heading to St. Louis to stop at the City Museum and the Aquarium. The museum looks like something straight out of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (without all the candy). We spent our time at he Aquarium, but were regretting not checking out the museum first. We booked what they called the "EAT" - Extreme Animal Tour at the Aquarium. The tour aloud us to feed, hold and pet many exotic and dangerous animals. We were told it was not for pansies, so of course, we had to take the challenge!

On Sunday we headed to a part of town called "The Hill" - (a really neat college town). There is this cute restaurant called "Fitz's." They bottle their own soda. The restaurant looks like an old fifties cafe - totally worth checking out. We couldn't stop at Fitz's without getting some obnoxiously large floats.

Before we headed back home, we went to a town just south of St. Louis called Crystal City. We found a deal (another Groupon!) where we could take an underground barge ride. The barge was at a lake inside an old cave mine.  We ended up being the only ones on the ride. It was very cool and unique.

We had a perfect weekend! If you are ever in St. Louis, I would encourage you to check out any of these places! Sometimes you just need a random weekend away!