If you're trying to figure out the best things to do in St. Louis this weekend, I'm going to save you the fifteen minutes of scrolling through the same recycled listicle that was clearly written by someone who has never once eaten a toasted ravioli in the actual city of St. Louis, Missouri. I've lived here my whole life. I taped KSHE off the radio in 1991. I know where to park. Let's go.
STL Gateway Living exists for exactly this moment — when you've got a free Saturday, maybe a Sunday too, and you want to spend it like someone who actually lives here. Not like someone who drove in from the suburbs with a fanny pack and a TripAdvisor printout. No offense to fanny packs. They're back now, apparently. My kids told me.
Here's what I've got for you.
START OUTSIDE, BECAUSE FOREST PARK IS NEVER WRONG
I don't care what month it is. Forest Park deserves to be your first call.
The park runs about 1,371 acres — bigger than Central Park in New York, a fact St. Louisans mention approximately once every four minutes to anyone from New York. The Saint Louis Art Museum sits up on Art Hill and it's free to get in. Always has been. You want to see the Impressionist collection? Walk in. No ticket, no reservation, no gift shop guilt required. Just go.
If you've got kids, the Saint Louis Zoo is also free. General admission, free. That's not a promotion. That's just how we do it here.
On a good weather weekend, the farmers markets set up around the area and you can spend a solid hour looking at local artisans selling handmade ceramics, small-batch hot sauces, and soaps that smell like decisions my wife would make without me. Worth every minute.
The park's historic brick architecture along the walking paths near the Jewel Box is the kind of thing you walk past twenty times before you actually stop and look at it. Stop and look at it.
SATURDAY MORNING: THE LOOP DOES NOT DISAPPOINT
The Delmar Loop is one of those places that has been declared dead about six times and keeps refusing to cooperate with that narrative.
Vintage record shops. Independent bookstores. Walk of Fame stars pressed into the sidewalk. Blueberry Hill is there — the music venue Chuck Berry played for years, which is a sentence I never get tired of saying out loud.
Saturday morning, grab coffee, walk the Loop, let your eyes go where they want. The urban gardens tucked between storefronts catch you off guard. Someone's always got something going on — a pop-up, a sidewalk sale, a guy with a guitar who is either very good or very committed. Sometimes both.
If you're hungry, you already know what I'm going to say. You eat at Imo's. Round pie, Provel cheese, cut into squares. Ask for triangles and somebody's uncle is going to need to sit down.
SUNDAY OPTION: GO FIND THE ARCH AND ACTUALLY GO INSIDE
I know. You've driven past the Gateway Arch a thousand times. You've seen it from 270. You've used it as a landmark to explain where you live to people who don't understand Missouri geography.
Go inside.
The tram ride to the top is a genuine experience. The pods are small — I want to be honest with you about the pods — but you get up there and you look out over the Mississippi River and the whole city lays out below you and it's one of those moments where you feel something. The museum underneath the Arch got a full renovation a few years back and it's legitimately excellent now. The history of westward expansion, the construction of the monument itself, the engineering specs. The legs of the Arch are equilateral triangles at the base, each side 54 feet wide. That kind of thing is in there.
It costs money. Worth it. Buy the ticket.
MID-WEEKEND WILDCARD: CITY MUSEUM
I have taken people to City Museum who thought they were going to a museum.
They were not going to a museum.
City Museum is ten stories of reclaimed industrial materials — actual aircraft, old construction equipment, salvaged urban architecture — welded and bolted and stacked into something that functions as an adult playground, a kid's dream, and a mild anxiety test all at once. There are tunnels. There are slides that drop multiple floors. There is a school bus hanging off the roof.
It was built by artist Bob Cassilly using salvaged materials from demolished St. Louis buildings, which means the historic brick architecture you're crawling through was actually here before you were. That's not a metaphor. That's load-bearing reclaimed brick.
Wear shoes you don't mind scuffing. Leave the white sneakers in the car.
EVENING: PICK A NEIGHBORHOOD AND EAT YOUR WAY THROUGH IT
The Hill is the Italian neighborhood on the south side and it has been the Italian neighborhood since the late 1800s. Bakers, butchers, restaurants where the pasta is made in the back. You don't need a reservation at every place. You do need to be hungry.
Soulard is the oldest neighborhood in the city, built around a farmers market that's been operating since 1779. The craft breweries in and around Soulard have multiplied in the last decade and most of them are doing something interesting. Sit at a bar made from reclaimed wood, order something local, and talk to whoever is next to you. That's the whole plan.
Central West End has the Victorian homes, the independent restaurants, the coffee shops where people are writing screenplays or reading Camus or just looking at their phones like the rest of us.
Pick one. You can't go wrong.
A QUICK NOTE ON TIMING AND LOGISTICS
If you're doing things to do in St. Louis this weekend and you haven't thought about parking, think about parking. Downtown on a busy Saturday can fill up. Get there early or use the garages near Busch Stadium on a non-game day when the rates drop and the crowds thin out. The stadium itself is worth walking past even when the Cardinals aren't playing — the red brick exterior and the statue garden outside are worth five minutes of your time.
And if you're hosting people this weekend — out-of-town guests, family coming in — and the house is a little worse for wear after a busy week, a local cleaning service can handle the pre-visit reset so you're not spending Friday night on your hands and knees. Dry utility, I know. But it's a real option.
THE BOTTOM LINE
There are more things to do in St. Louis this weekend than you have weekend to put them in. That's been true for as long as I've lived here and I've been living here long enough that my taste in music stopped updating around 1994. The city keeps going. The Arch is still standing. Ted Drewes is still handing you the Concrete upside down and it still doesn't fall out.
They've done it since '59. Only thing in this town more dependable than a Cardinals box score in October.
Get out there. The 314 is ready for you.
Ready to get started? STL Gateway Living can help.