Showing posts with label St. Louis Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Louis Travel. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

St. Louis Hilton at the Ballpark Review

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I wanted to tell you guys about the hotel, we stayed at in St. Louis. We stayed at the St. Louis Hilton at the Ball Park. It is extremely close to Busch Stadium like across the street. It is in downtown St. Louis and it is an easy walk to the Arch and many restaurants. We didn’t have to do a whole lot of driving when we were there. It is a great location and a gorgeous hotel. The lobby is beautiful. There is even a Starbucks and a restaurant in the hotel. There are also two bars. It was amazing. The hotel staff was all very nice and made our stay very comfortable. We had valet parking. It was my first experience with valet parking and it was really neat. The hotels parking lot is across the street and down the road a little ways so not having to carry our luggage that far was great. Not only that but the bellboy brought our luggage up for us and unloaded it. We were all pretty tired at the end of each day it was nice to just be able to pull up and get out of the car and walk in the hotel. The valets were very nice and we didn’t have to wait long to get our car. We had a lot to do so not spending the extra time was great.

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The room was so comfortable. The beds were so soft and it felt good to lay down on them and just hang out. The view was breathtaking. We had a view of part of the Arch, the old capital building and a couple fountains. St. Louis is a gorgeous city. The TV was a nice one. It was a flat screen. Noah’s favorite channel was the hotel channel. It was pretty funny to hear him to ask to watch it. It was great to have such a nice room that we didn’t have to worry about anything to come back to.

Every night we enjoyed the pool and hot tub. This pool and hot tub was featured in George Clooney’s movie The Air Up There. I have never seen the movie but it was cool to think that George Clooney could have been sitting where I was sitting. Yes, I am a huge George Clooney fan. Noah and I danced in the pool in my arms. I sang him songs and we just had some special mommy and Noah time. He had a huge smile on his face the entire time. It was nice to have his little warm body in my arms because the water was pretty cold. My favorite thing was the hot tub. It felt so nice to be in it after a long day. It was huge. It is the biggest one I have ever seen or been in. It would accommodate a lot of people. They also had a dry sauna that I would sit in too. I love saunas. I would rather be hot than freezing cold. There was hardly anyone in the pool area when we were there which was nice. I don’t like a lot of noise when I am trying to relax. It felt like our own personal spot to go and relax.

Unfortunately, the night before we left, Noah got really sick. I was lying in bed watching Locked Up Raw. All the sudden I heard someone throwing up. I jumped up because it scared me. I was almost asleep and so I got up and my little boy was sitting up extremely sick all over the bed. I will spare you the details but it was really gross. The comforter, the sheets, his pillow pet was all covered in it. I felt so bad for Noah because it happened over and over again. I called Guest Services and explained the situation. I wasn’t sure if they were able to do anything because a lot of places don’t have overnight housekeeping. Thankfully St. Louis Hilton at the Ball Park does. Housekeeping came up to our room and changed all the bedding for us. She even left an extra sheet incase it happened again. The other times we were more prepared with towels. I was sad to check out of the hotel because it was so nice and everyone was great.

If you are in St. Louis you should stay at the St. Louis Hilton at the Ball Park because it is a great hotel that has lots of great amenities and is even there for you when your child gets sick in the middle of the night. It is a beautiful place and I would love to stay there again the next time we are visiting St. Louis.

Thank you to The St. Louis CVC for sponsoring my family's trip to St. Louis. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Magic House St. Louis Childrens Museum Review

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While we were in St. Louis, we had the opportunity to visit The Magic House which is St. Louis Children’s Museum. This was definitely Noah’s favorite thing we did. The Magic House is an amazing place. The whole building is full of hands on activities for kids to do. There were so many things to do. We didn’t get to do them all but we had a lot of fun. Everything was educational. I am a strong believer that children learn through play and using their imagination vs. sitting down and learning from hearing someone talk. It was really neat to see all the children learning without realizing it. We were lucky too because the staff was dressed up for Halloween and Noah was able to Trick or Treat some right in The Magic House.

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We really enjoyed working on the car and changing the tires. We also loved fishing in the pond. There was a grocery store that looked like the real thing. Noah and I enjoyed pretending to shop and playing cashier. Another great thing about The Magic House is that you can just let your child roam free and you can just sit back and watch them explore. There aren’t lines you have to wait in. It is a really different environment than the other things we did. There were different rooms and just was really fun. Noah played with Legos for about a half hour with older kids. I love watching Noah interact with others. He has great ideas and is not really shy around other kids. He went up to them and asked to play with them. He was polite and shared well.

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We loved the giant water table too. Although Noah had wet pants after that, next time we should do the water table last. He didn’t mind though. He had so much fun playing with the ducks and boats and just splashing around. There were water wheels too. I had to remind Noah to walk carefully in the room with the water table because the floor was wet wet wet. He kept going back to the fishing pond and fishing. He was so proud to catch fish. I was exploring a little too. I had my mom keep an eye on Noah and I went in the bubble room. I saw on the website you can be inside a bubble. I didn’t try to do that because there were kids trying to do it. I did try the other bubble activities. My only complaint was they needed to refill the bubble solution for each of the bubble activities. I was able to make some cool bubble shapes though.

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When we were ready to go Noah didn’t want to leave, he wanted to stay there. I think he wanted to move in. I was thinking the whole time that they need to build one of these where we live. We have a children’s museum but it doesn’t compare to The Magic House. I also was a little bummed that we don’t live closer. I could see myself taking Noah to The Magic House on the weekends. I stopped by the gift shop and they have all kinds of cool toys. I found a few little things for Noah and a Magic House T-shirt. We waved good bye to The Magic House and talked about coming back again soon.

Thank you to The St. Louis CVC for sponsoring my family’s trip to St. Louis including tickets to The Magic House. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Show Me St. Louis!

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Recently, my family had the opportunity to visit St. Louis. I feel so lucky that the St. Louis CVC picked my family to take such a wonderful trip. I am so excited to share all about my trip with you guys. I spent quite a bit of time planning my trip using the Explore St. Louis website. I picked out where we wanted to eat and what activities we wanted to do. I wanted to do so much stuff. I wanted to take in the full experience of St. Louis during our trip. If I were to write it all in one post it would be so incredibly long so I will have to break it up in to multiple posts because I have so much to tell you.

I want to start off by telling you some information about the St. Louis CVC. They are the go to ultimate resource to use when you are planning a trip to St. Louis or even if you live there and are looking for new places to visit or restaurants to try out. The website was extremely helpful when I was planning the meals and activities for our trip. There was so much information. I felt like I could get a feel of the places by the descriptions. There are so many different kinds of restaurants in St. Louis. There is definitely something for everyone. I think anyone’s palette could be satisfied in St. Louis. If you only like one kind of food they have many different restaurants to eat at. I think the hardest part of planning my trip was figuring out exactly where we wanted to eat. There were tons of restaurants that sounded so good. I even asked the rep I worked with about some suggestions as to where we should go because she lives there. I figured why not ask a local person. Her suggestions were spot on delicious. As most of you know I love to eat. I am so glad to report that my tummy was very happy every day of our trip.

There is a whole section of things to do on the website. There is a lot of information about each activity and you can really get a feel of if it is something you would like to do. We had so much fun at all the places we visited. They were all so different and Noah loved doing each one. We looked forward to each thing with huge smiles on our faces. Definitely something to help decide what you would love to see while you are visiting. St. Louis is one of those cities that there is so much to do that you wouldn’t possibly know about everything without some help. You could live there for years and not know about all the awesome things to see.

When you go on a trip for business or pleasure you have to stay somewhere. There are so many hotels to choose from and the St. Louis CVC website has information about all the hotels in St. Louis and they include links to the hotels website so you can look at pictures and the amenities. I personally think that it is good to look at pictures of where you are staying before you go. You don’t want to end up at The Bates Motel do you? I love that there are ratings of the hotels. If you are a hotel snob like me who will only stay at a nice hotel it is important. Another cool feature is you can click book a room from the St. Louis CVC website so it makes finding out where to book your room easy. That would be great in a hurry.

There will be more posts about my trip to St. Louis. If you are planning a trip to St. Louis you should check out Explore St. Louis to make the most out of your trip. Stay tuned for more about our adventures in St. Louis.

This trip was sponsored by the St. Louis CVC for my family to come visit St. Louis, my thoughts and opinions are my own.