Best Way to Spend One Day in St. Louis: Free Activities!

I have a long bucket list of places I want to visit. Some abroad, some in the states, but St. Louis was never on my list. When we decided to stop there it was fine because we were driving through anyways, but I had no idea I would fall in love with the city! Also, this post contains affiliate links, check out our disclosures here.

Like seriously you guys, if St. Louis is not on your bucket list, add it now! We had so much fun there! The best part? All of the activities we did were free!!! Yes, you heard that correct. I will 100% be visiting St. Louis again when we have more time to spend there.

That being said, here is how we spent our one day in St. Louis!

The Gateway Arch

Being that I didn’t know much about St. Louis we decided to start at the one major tourist spot, The Gateway Arch. I thought we would go see it, take some pictures, and move on! Well, turns out they have a FREE museum!

We ended up spending a couple of hours there checking out the museum and learning all about the construction of the arch as well as the history of St. Louis. It is so fascinating what you can learn about America by visiting different states. Being from the West I sometimes forget how much more history there is the farther East you get.

Forest Park

After checking out the Arch we were getting hungry so thanks to a recommendation from an employee at the museum we headed to Forest Park for a picnic. This park is huge and has so much to offer! We had already packed sandwiches for lunch so we found a shady picnic table and ate our lunch.

We spend the next hour or so just walking around the park and checking out everything there was to see! The park itself is beautiful and I could have spend hours just exploring. But the best part? There are so many free activities in the park! The St. Louis Zoo, St. Louis Art Museum, and the St. Louis History Museum are all in this park and they are all FREE!

I told you guys there was a lot of free stuff to do! And they are perfect for kids and adults alike!

The St. Louis Zoo

It was late in the afternoon by the time we realized all these activities were free. And while they don’t cost anything, they do have hours of operation. Since they all closed at 5:00 we only had time to go to one and I am a sucker for zoos!

This zoo had all the animals you could want and it was so clean and nice! We saw bears, gorillas, sea lions, giraffes, and more! The super cool thing about this zoo is that they did have interactive stations that you could pay a little bit of money and do super cool things. It was $12.95 for an adventure pass or you could bay $3 – $5 at each attracting.

These extras included things like feeding sting rays and a special sea lion show! We didn’t end up doing any of the extras just because of time but it would have been so worth it if we had all day there! But we still had the best time doing the zoo for free and I know you will too!

Sites to See

After the zoo we decided to just go explore. We checked out Ballpark Village which was so awesome! This is the area around the St. Louis Cardinals stadium and there is so much to do! There are fun bars & restaurants, little shops, and of course some fun baseball themed stuff!

We also checked out Union Station. This area so so neat and packed with things to do! If you did have some extra money and time the aquarium and ropes course can both be found in Union Station and looked like so much fun! We opted to just walk around and checkout the koi pond and watch people ride the ferris wheel for a while.

Conclusion

After everything we did that day we were exhausted! We finally got back to our car and found a place to sleep and got some rest.

We absolutely had the best time in St. Louis and will 100% be back! I don’t know how I never knew how much fun this city was! But if you are like me and sleeping on St. Louis, I’m here to change you mind and make sure you visit asap!