Known to pioneers as "the gateway to the West," St. Louis still welcomes visitors with a small- town homeyness, but the city has updated its image with lots of urban attractions. Situated on the Mississippi River, the city offers paddlewheel tours, panoramic views from the top of the Gateway Arch, simple pleasures such as picnics in Forest Park and interactive play at many excellent kids' museums, including the St. Louis Science Center, one of the country's best. Forest Park, a 1300-acre urban play space just fifteen minutes from the riverfront's Gateway Arch, offers a great mix of nature and nurture art, history, theater, science magic for kids, a well-landscaped zoo plus biking and hiking trails.
BEST MUSEUMS and CITY ATTRACTIONS
St. Louis has three outstanding children's museums plus a top-notch zoo.
City Museum. You expect surprises from a building with a 3-story high praying mantis out front and the City Museum delivers. A wacky combination of recycled mouse cages, mosaic tiles, watch bands, airplane panels and other thrown out stuff is resurrected as arty exhibits. Kids crawl through sky tunnel, explore a cave, climb into a whale's head and also watch glass blowers, take part in a performing dog circus, make crafts and peruse salvaged gargoyles and other outdoor sculptures. Best for ages five and older, a trip here will energize kids' imaginations.
City Museum, 701 N. 15th Street (314-231-2489).
At the Magic House,St. Louis Children's Museum, little ones can bang pots and play peek-a-boo at Just Baby and Me. Kids can build sand sculptures, bounce balls, navigate boats, zoom down a three-story slide, explore a multi-level children's village and produce television news shows. You can dance with your shadow, tap morse code, try computers, and crawl through tunnel mazes. This hands-on facility is geared to infants through nine-year-olds.
Magic House, St. Louis Children's Museum, 516 S. Kirkwood Road (314-822-8900), www.magichouse.com. (Located in a St. Louis suburb).
The St. Louis Science Center. Located in Forest Park, the center has more than 500 hands-on exhibits that explain DNA, dinosaurs, tornados, aviation, sewers, coal mines and scores of other topics. A life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex moves and roars menacingly in the atrium. At the Human Adventure gallery, explore perception and sense by creating finding out why "pretzels" in your ears help hearing and how your hands can conduct an electric current. At the Discovery Room lets little kids can finger skeletons, try out a wheelchair, and sit in a tepee. Outside in Monsanto Science Park, kids can become part of a kaleidoscope and a giant prism, crawl through thermal tubes, switch giant gears and roll balls down a looping track.
-St. Louis Science Center, 314-289-4444
St. Louis Zoo. This 90-acre facility is one of St. Louis most popular attractions. At the Emerson Electric Children's Zoo kids learn about the animals by mimicking their behaviors through a clever combination of exhibits and play. Kids can feed lorikeets nectar, slide down a see-through chute in the otter pool, climb a spider web made of rope and view kolas without any barriers.
At the Living World Educational Center kids use a combination of computers and video screens to discover the biological world. In the Animal Hall you'll be amazed at the dazzling display of four viewing levels tanks of coral, screens that flash images of spawning salmon, a live quail, and a computer with definitions of "anthropod." In the Ecology Hall, use the computers to find out about bird feeding habits or extinct animals.
Walk through the free-flight cage where birds swoop and chatter. Other aviaries house a bald eagle, red-billed toucans and the endangered white neck cranes. At Jungle of the Apes, visit Fred, a 330-pound silverback lowland gorilla, the zoo's primate pride.
The miniature train makes it easy to get around. Your children will like riding under the waterfall and through the tunnel (warn little ones of the several minutes of darkness).
St. Louis Zoo, Forest Park (314-781-0900), www.stlzoo.org
BEST CITY VIEW
What's a city without a symbol? St. Louis is synonymous with the Gateway Arch Market Street on the river front, (314-425-4465). This 630-foot-high stainless-steel curve glinting along the riverfront commemorates the city as a gateway to the west for the pioneers. A park surrounds the arch.
Buy a timed ticket if you want to ride the tram to the top. The bird's eye view is dramatic, but beware: ride the tram only if you can tolerate tight spaces. While awaiting your turn browse the exhibits in the ground level Museum of Westward Expansion. The artifacts include wooden stagecoaches, Native American peace medals and recipes for buffalo stew from the Lewis & Clark expedition.
The new exhibits in the tram's waiting area make the line less tedious. Visitors at the South leg experience Time trams to the Top, an exhibit recreating a mid-1800's morning on the riverfront. Hear the crowd at the dock and the paddlewheelers horn, and see cargo awaiting loading. At the north leg, relive the morning of October 28, 1965 when the last section of the arch was put in place.
Gateway Arch, 314-425-4465.
BEST PLACES TO STAY
Downtown's renovated Union Station has scores of shops and eateries. At the stations' Hyatt Regency (314-231-1234) you'll find kids' menus an outdoor pool. The Hampton Inn Union Station (314-241-9111) has an indoor pool and the Embassy Suites Hotel ,in a different downtown locale, gives families suite space.
Candyce H. Stapen's books include the second editions of Great Family Vacations South, and Great Family Vacations Northeast. Published by Globe Pequot, the series continues with the revised Great Family Vacations Mid-West & Rocky Mountains and Great Family Vacations West. Cruise Vacations With Kids, 2nd edition (Prima Publishing) is at bookstores now.
