Next stop, see the City Museum. It's around $12-15 for adults, and don't forget to factor in the $5 parking nearby, but this odd place kept us entertained for four hours, and we didn't even see the whole thing or the renowned Aquarium with the stingray petting tanks. The museum is primarily an art project composed of an urban junk yard of salvaged buildings, tanks, and bits of metal, wood, and concrete. It's interwoven as a giant vertical playground into an old shoe factory which also holds a mini-circus, curio museum, and exhibition of old architectural decoration. It was overrun with children so be forewarned, although it was expansive enough to find quiet moments and spaces. Also highlighted was the Used clothing store up on the third floor, which has great prices on retro clothing, including a $5 scarf box. We spent nearly twenty minutes in that store alone. The museum is best experienced with the eye of a young explorer as the numerous slides, ladders, creep and crawl spaces, hidden corridors, and burrowing holes tunnel through the entire complex inside and out. It left me exhausted and bruised at the end of it.
But it's now lunchtime, so head on over to Pappy's Smokehouse for a wait and some BBQ. I've only been there for lunch, but every time I've been (during the weekday) the wait is at least half an hour to 45 minutes of standing in a single line that threads through the restaurant, around the corridor, and out the door. The long line is due to the single cashier and high demand. By forcing people to put thier orders in one party at a time, the food is ready two minutes after you order it, and there's enough seating available to sit down and eat, so the whole thing works. And, its so far the best BBQ in town. The best hot links I've ever had, but not the best BBQ, which still belongs to Head Country BBQ although you'll have to go to Ponca City, Oklahoma to get it.
If you're not too sleepy after the BBQ, drive back downtown for a wander through Laclede's Landing, which is a small, cobblestone, historic district famous for Laclede landing there at some point. I'm not sure who he was or when he landed, but I was assured it was quite historic. There are a few good places to sit outside and drink, and it looked like there was also a Wax Museum nearby although we didn't check it out. It's also a good place to see the Mississippi River up close and personal, and then wander the hell away from the brown muddy flow of water and hideous Floating Casinos. From Laclede's Landing, you are only a short walk away from the
In the heat of the day, the last place you want to go is Forest Park, but you're trying to fit in all the things I've done in St.Louis into one day, so you go there anyway. It's a very large park with a lot of walking involved, although the beautiful, classical monumental buildings set into the rolling manicured landscape will remind some of Versailles, if they have a very vague memory of Versailles. You will also not want to miss the Saint Louis Zoo, which is one of the best ranked zoos in the US according to the latest US Zoos & World Report, although we did miss it since we were pretty lost after walking around in the heat.
And if you're lost and dazed from the heat, wander over to Kayak Coffee, a colorado skiing themed coffeeshop on the corner of the park, where you can get pretty good iced coffee and more free wifi to figure out where you made that wrong turn.
Once you give up for the day as night begins to fall, you should head over to the Loop, a section of Delmar road filled with unique shops, bars, and restaurants. The loop is so called, because due to a freak accident at the SLU relativistic cyclotron in the 1970's, the end of the street actually joins back to itself through a standing wave in the temporal plane of existance. There's another Saint Louis Bread Co. as well as my favorite, Blueberry Hill, a bar/restaurant/Chuck Berry Museum/livehouse/dartroom. Real good burgers. Seat yourself and the food is pretty cheap as far as that goes.
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