Road Trip! St. Louis

Each year, Casey and I try to do two weekend get-aways. One in the fall and one in the spring. We haven't really done any major vacations since we got married, but these weekends are really nice 'mini-breaks' from the daily pressures of work, house, and the like. This year, to change it up, we decided to road trip about 10 minutes away from our house---downtown St. Louis.

We booked a hotel room at the Drury Plaza Hotel Downtown at the Arch.

Drury Plaza Hotel Downtown at the Arch

Aside from the beautiful location in downtown St. Louis, Drury comes with many perks--I would highly recommend Drury to anyone looking for a comfortable, pleasant hotel experience. The quality of service was excellent. The room was clean and updated. The food was of higher quality than the average "free" breakfast (they even have happy hour food and drinks in the evening, but we missed it b/c we arrived too late). The hotel lobby was spacious and sharp-looking. It even came with a nice still-life of the Lewis and Clark expedition.


Lewis and Clark (and Casey)

 The hotel itself was great. But more than just the hotel was the getting away from life at home. We started our stay-cation Friday afternoon, when I met Casey at Borders and we spent 2-ish hours reading and perusing books. I read halfway through a YA novel called If I Stay that I had heard about on NPR and sounded interesting. It was good enough to take us back to Borders on Saturday so I could finish it before heading to the hotel. Well, that and we both had 40% off coupons--hard to pass up such a good deal on books!

Saturday we cleaned our house before leaving. It's always nice to come home to a clean house. We took our sweet time, getting up late, cleaning, shopping at Borders, so we didn't arrive at the hotel until later in the evening. But we weren't in a rush. We did, however, decide to book a late dinner so that we could spend some time at the hotel, lounging in the pool and enjoying the luxury of cable tv (more so for Casey than me), before leaving again. We decided on a steakhouse that was conveniently located next door to the hotel.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at our scheduled reservation time, it turns out that "someone" had called to cancel our reservations 15 minutes before. Casey doesn't buy the story, and I am skeptical myself, but long story short, they had already shut down the kitchen because they had no other reservations for the evening. LAME! Instead, we ended up at City Diner for our fancy ;) dinner.

City Diner--All Dolled Up!

It was no steakhouse, for sure, but it was one of the only places we could think of on the fly that would serve food after 11pm. And it gave us an excuse to 1.) extend our retreat into Sunday evening with a second try for steaks and 2.) get dressed up for dinner AGAIN!

Before calling it a night, we decided to make one more stop--Lumiere Place Casino. I had never been before, so we thought that staying at the Drury, just a stone's throw from the casino, was about the most opportune time. Neither of us is a big gambler. Casey likes to talk about how "if he wins the lottery..." he will do x, y, or z; and when I remind him that he has to play the lottery to have a chance at winning, his patent response is, "Well, NOT playing really doesn't significantly decrease my chances of winning!" We spent all of 30 minutes at the casino and each lost our designated $5 of casino money in the slot machines. Easy come, easy go! The whole time, I felt like I was in the movie Oceans 11. It was pretty much exactly how I had always imagined it. Highly unimpressive. If I never step foot in another casino, my life will be no less fulfilled.

Sunday dawned bright and clear (a contrast to the cloudy, windy Saturday), so we decided it would be a perfect day for a hike. We haven't hiked together since our honeymoon in the Smoky Mountains. After a bit of research, we decided on the Rockwood Reservation, to get away from the major highways and hopefully, the crowds, and because there was nothing online that excluded pets, based on the website info. But upon pulling into the parking lot, the first big sign we saw: "NO PETS!" Go figure. I mean, what use could that information be on your website, right?


Trekker doing the proverbial head out the car window


Instead, we ended up at Greenfeldt Park, which backs up to the reservation (and, we later found out, to Six Flags--as we made our way back to 44 via a more direct route, we began to hear the screams from The Screaming Eagle. I had always wondered about all the forest behind the park. Now I know!). We found an appealing trail at Greenfeldt and hiked for almost two hours--a great way to spend a warm spring afternoon. And Trek enjoyed it too, especially after spending the night by himself--poor pup! And, as an added bonus, we worked up a great appetite for our steak dinner--round two.

This time we ended up at Sam's Steakhouse in South County. Thankfully, no glitches in the reservation time, and we ended a wonderful weekend with a fantastic dinner together.

Casey's 24 oz. prime rib

All Dolled Up AGAIN!--and well worth it!