I used to live near Lake George, NY and it is hilarious to see it on the same list of vacation spots as St. Louis.

This list is a bit bizzar. It lists StL as #1…for Kids…& the 1st thing that it says about it is that its “Slower Paced for a Lazy vacation”! Who is their target here??? What 20 y/o is up for hitching their way across country to invest their only time off in a slow & lazy place with a park & running paths?

This is how they discribe their #1 choice? Very funny!

How did they dump on their #10, or #50 on that list: “It’s great, the grass-growing is a highlight & the paint drys fast from June-August”???

In fact, why did they even bother?

What a joke. I’ve always said that St. Louis is a great place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit there. Whoever made this list was an idiot.

The place which obviously SHOULD have been #1: Las Vegas. Cheap lodging and food, and an incredible array of outdoor and indoor entertainment. We spent a week there several years ago, and only gambled for about 10 minutes. But within an hour, we went to Red Rocks, Mount Charleston, the Mojave Desert, and Hoover Dam. We can’t wait to go back.

The 3 first commenters missed the whole point of the article. “Cheap”!

I would have used “Inexpensive”!

Having spent my first 32 years in Missouri (Salem, St Louis, Maplewood and Bel Ridge) I can attest to the fact that if planned properly a visit to the St Louis area can be quite inexpensive.

It is always a pleasure for me to “get back home”. Would I move back to Missouri? Possibly! However, it would be to one of the many towns with no more than 29,000 population.

Let’s be honest, if college kids are needing to come to STL for a vacation, they obviously don’t need to be taking a vacation. This is not a destination. What is there to offer college kids? A baseball game if they are fans, the zoo, 90 minutes for the arch, then what? A trip out to Florissant to see early 70’s architecture at its finest?
Yeah, sure, kids plan vacations around visiting places like forest park and a laughable art museum….They need to save up for another semester and head to SoBe…

I am well aware that this is nothing more than a local newspaper website, but good God people, have just a little pride in yourself and check your posts for spelling errors before you hit submit. I would also suggest proper grammar, but don’t want to overload the brain…..
Bizzar? Seriously? Somebody thought that was a good way to spell that?
If my folks made my annual college vacation one here, I’d pray it was during baseball season so I could see a game, then I’d try Jack-In-The-Box tacos, and promptly be looking for the airport.

I love St. Louis! Whatever it is that floats your boat, St. Louis, or Missouri, usually has it. I usually take a few vacations a year, but am still happy on what St. Louis has to offer compared to other cities. St. Louis has especially seemed to step-it-up in the last few years, and i’d like to see the city continue to support it’s music heritage (like Memphis, Austin, and Nashville). Hail, Hail, Rock n Roll!

The comments below clearly reflect people who are not seeing all of the advantages of a trip to St. Louis. Think about it: Free brewery tours, free zoo, free art museum, free history museum, free science center, free museum in the bottom of the arch, free old courthouse tours, free cathedral tours, etc. etc. etc.

Note the theme: “FREE”

Add cheap ball games, casinos, Washington Ave., the Landing, Soulard, etc. to the FREE stuff above, and St. Louis is easily one of the cheapest places for a college student to visit while still having a good time.

I love St. Louis. Lived here all my life. All it takes is a short vacation to Chicago or elsewhere to once again appreciate how much St. Louis has to offer at a cheap price.

If you don’t like st.louis that much, then why do you live here? Seriously, i love living in st.louis. There is alot more then just the arch, or going to see buildings as one poster mentions. Not only in the city itself, there is plenty outside of the city to see. I have friends who come here for vacation.

They mentioned cheap, free is the best cheap i could say and with so much free this is a good destination for those (such as students) to come to.

I was the chairman for the 1988 Model ‘A’ club’s national convention. It was held at Holiday Inn Wstport because we needed a lot of parking since 400(+/-) Model ‘A’ Fords showed up from around the country. During this week long event, we scheduled bus tours to A-B brewery, Grant’s Farm, the Zoo, the Arch, Union Station, St. ouis Center (It was going stong in ‘88) and Laclede’s Landing. We passed out comment cards at the event. We recevied comments about the hotel, the parking, etc… but most of the comments were how everything is St. Louis is free or almost free.

Since then my wife and I (from Oakville), drove downtown, stayed 2 days at the Clarion and just bummed around downtown. We spent time in the old court house, soldier’s memorial, the Arch grounds, Laclede Landing, etc. We had a great mini vacation without driving anywhere!

you know, this is a great town on or off a budget. it is laid back, there is plenty of stuff to do that is cheap or free, it’s fairly compact so if you’re staying centrally you can do a day trip to forrest park and a night at CWE or the Loop or where ever. And another thing, I love Chicago and San Fran and all of that, but your budget flies out the window just to park your car!

Quit doggin on the Lou and realize that if college students picked us…we must be good!

I recall once sitting with a date at Jazz at the Bistro and the club placed a cute, and obviously inexperienced, couple across from us. We learned they were newly weds on a honeymoon from some small town east of Edwardsville. They ordered appetizers and a drink each and then started counting their cash. Frankly, me and my date thought they were cute and secretly picked up their tab. I forgot what the server made up to tell them — 1 millionth customer or something.
These folks drove 100 miles in an old car, stayed in an inexpensive hostelry, and went to one expensive nightclub-restaurant, and enjoyed a weekend that they could almost afford. They reminded me of me when I lived in Manhattan, Kansas, and went to Kansas City for my honeymoon back in 1970-ish. (I’ve forgotten the exact date.)

I think “They’re right” has a good point. St. Louis is a regional destination. We have to accept the fact until we opt to change a few things we’re going to be a regional destination. Our attraction is that we’re affordable for the vast majority of people in the Heartland who can’t afford to fly around and pay $400 a night to be able to see a beach out of the window or pay $150 for one theater ticket or even $500 to rent a sports car for four days and three night. And until we do away with 1800s-era hours for taverns and drinking rules — ala New Orleans — we’re going to be a low key place for families who like Zoos, amusement parks, riding to the top of the Arch, museums, history and the like.

As for kids’ destinations, college students, high schoolers, if you don’t have a beach or at least something like Lake Michigan, or ski slopes, St. Louis isn’t going to be a national or global destination.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sure, I’m a single man who’d like 24-hour taverns and more entertainment districts, and fewer politicians uptight about somebody pulling her shirt up. But there’s a price for that, too. Just ask New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago. We pay it or we don’t. When we’re ready to pay it, elect a new set of aldermen, a new mayor, and get moving.

But we don’t need to pretend that this is a quality issue. We are what we are and when we want to be faster, we’ll speed up. If we don’t we won’t.

To quote Tutti, ‘You can’t do anything like you can in St. Louis’!!!!

Hey kids great place to visit St Louis… See our scenic park with dead people laying face down and homeless everywhere, buy a pretzle..Travel to one of our great hot spot bar eateries and watch a bartender get shot and the robbers shoot each other. or take your chances on the roads and see if a cop drunk drives over you ! We have so much to offer..and its summer kids

Maybe I do not bore easily, because I have lived in St. Louis my entire life and have yet to come across a day that I lacked having something to do. Even when an out-of-town guest arrives, without regard to their financial abilities, I try to make even a simple trip for pretzels their hallmark vacation moment. Maybe I just have fun friends and family.

If your list of things that are important to make a successful vacation is just that - “a list of things” - then I guess St. Louis could be the short stick. Although, I do think the list of things that are available in St. Louis is much less expensive than other cities.

I guess I am lucky that I only have had a few encounters with St. Louis bashers. I make it a point to dismiss anyone that says “Well, where I am from…” with a simple, “then please, go back there.”

Who is this contingency of people who constantly bash thier OWN city? There is a whole group of them that come on here anytime anything good is said about St. Louis. Guess what, it doesn’t make you COOL to come on here and say all these negative things. What a LOOSER attitude. If you hate the place so much get the HELL out. Please, for the good of St. Louis, go somewhere else. You people are why I left St. Louis. (I’m a 27 year old, well educated professional, you know the type you would WANT in your city). Guess why I left? Because of infestation of the type of people who find some need to constantly bash my hometown. You guys are the reason that St. Louis is declining. Young people who are educated, smart and motivated want to be somewhere where people have pride in thier town and are actively trying to improve it. Ever hear of a self fulfilling prophecy? That’s exactly what St. Louis is. It’s people want it to suck. So guess what it does? The lack of pride is sickning, backwards and sad. Anyone who can’t see the positives of St. Louis is not looking hard enough. The only negative about St. Louis is it’s people and thier “Where did you go to high school looser attitudes.

I am a college student in New York City, but am local to this area. Many of my college friends like coming down to visit to get away from the city. There is nothing wrong with a relaxing and, yes, cheap vacation. For people that like to get out and go hiking and walking this is a really fun place. Don’t just knock it, St. Louis rocks!

I love St. Louis, this is the best city in the world. Any btw you can say crappy things about NYC and LA too….drunk bums and shootings. If you have nothing nice to say about my city then don’t say anything at all. This place is awesome!

They should have mentioned our mardi gras!

As a current college student who likes to bring his friends to St. Louis, let me share my experience. There are only a few things to do here that the KC and Chicago kids like. Those are walking down Delmar, Forest Park, Shaw’s Garden, and the City Museum…but oh boy do they love the City Museum. It’s the undisputed best time in the midwest.

Well said, Mike the Lawyer. Don’t forget the City Museum, either. Yah, it actually costs money, but it’s worth it. And, our zoo is one of the best in the US. We get tired of the arch here, but it’s an amazing wonder to people from all over the US, still. Trust me, we live in Kansas City, but there’s a lot more to do in St. Louis. It’s a great and relatively inexpensive getaway. If we want to spend money, we’ll go to San Francisco.

Just moved from St. Louis to Philadelphia about a year ago. Interesting to see both cities made the list. In terms of “cheap” I don’t think I would have put Philadelphia in the same category as St. Louis. Just had some folks visit from St. Louis and the hotel room was $400/night! Anyway, I’m glad to see St. Louis made the top of the list. Now that I am no longer a resident I find that St. Louis is one of my favorite places to visit, not only to see old friends, but to see the city as a tourist and see sites that I didn’t see when I lived there. Go STL - you still have a special place in my heart!

Can’t really understand anyone who would want to visit here that didn’t have family or friends. I also don’t see how cheap comes into the equation - they should say “value”. I still don’t even see Stl as a value. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t not like this city, but I wouldn’t tell a stranger to come visit for the tourist attractions. I’d say stop by and visit the arch, maybe the city museum just as much as I’d say stop in Hays Kansas to see the world’s largest hay-stack.
If you want value, go camping.

This is a great city with a lot to do and it is incredibly affordable. We’ve loved our Central West End neighborhood and the rest of the city (and the region in general) since moving here 4 years ago. Good to see St. Louis getting some good press.

Congratulations St. Louis on being designated as Number 1 and the Travel Destination Leader!

Mark Memoly
Missouri Will Show The Way!
Kansas City
http://mmemoly.newsvine.com/
Keep Memoly In Your Memory!

2010 Republican Candidate For US Senate – Missouri
Join Our Campaign To Elect Mark Memoly To US Senate Today: mmemoly@gmail.com

Lake George NY is really thrilled to be listed! For a complete list of FREE things to do in this beautiful Adirondack Region check out the local chamber of commerce website at http://www.LakeGeorgeChamber.com
The 6 Million Acre Adirondack Park is awesome but when you want to come out of the wilderness there are tons of free concerts, art shows, festivals, historic reenactments and special events. Lake George itself is a 32 mile long playground with water so crystal clear that many of the lakeside homes still use it as their main source of drinking water. Check us out…only one hour north of Albany!

It’s great to be a part of this list.

If you think St. Louis is boring, you’re clearly not looking hard enough for things to do.