A Night Out (on a budget!)

Last night Daniel and I went to St. Louis for an early anniversary celebration. Our anniversary is not until December 20. But we will be busy with our Christmas production at church that weekend, and the show I wanted to see was playing now, so we decided to celebrate a month early. When we got married, we decided that instead of getting presents for each other on our anniversary, we would go out and do something together. We haven't been able to go away for a whole night in a while, due to having a baby and being on a budget. But we left Audrey with a trusted friend for the night, and we took advantage of some really good deals that made it an affordable night for us. We were able to enjoy a $300 night away for around $100.

First we checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in downtown St. Louis. It was pretty nice, and our room had a great view of the riverfront and the arch. Our hotel is the building right next to the Hyatt. It was an older hotel, but it was still nice.
This is the hotel lobby.
To get a good deal on the hotel, I used Hotwire.com. I love using Hotwire to get good rates on nice hotels. The only downside is that you don't know what hotel you will be staying at until after you pay. You chose the location and the star rating of the hotel, then book your room, and then they tell you where you will be staying. I've used it several times in the past and have always had a great experience. This time we got our room at the Crowne Plaza for just $52 (plus fees/taxes which made it about $65 total). This was our room.And we were surprised that the room had a balcony with a great view of the riverfront and the arch. I wasn't able to get a picture of the whole arch (because I forgot to pack my other camera lens, and the one I was using does not allow you to zoom in or out, making for limited picture taking of big objects like the Arch!). But, from our room, you could see the entire arch and riverfront. Here are a couple of shots of the view from our balcony. I couldn't stay on the balcony too long, because we were on the 20th floor, and I'm a bit afraid of heights! This first one was as the sun was setting on Friday night.
And this was the view from our room when we got up this morning:

After we checked in, we walked down to the riverfront. It was a pretty nice day for November! Again, it was a bit difficult to take Arch pictures with the lens I was using, but Daniel was able to get a fun angle with this one.

And here's Daniel at the base of the Arch. He looks so little!

For dinner, we ate at a little place called 400 Olive. It was in the downtown Hilton hotel, which was conveniently located directly across the street from our hotel. It was a nice place, and the food was pretty good. Here we are at the restaurant. They had these little circular booths, which looked really fun but they were a bit awkward for seating.

For a good deal on our dinner, I used restaurant.com. It's another website that I really like, but I don't get to use very frequently because they don't really have any restaurants in Springfield. But if you live in a city, there are all kinds of restaurant options. On restaurant.com you can buy $25 restaurant gift certificates for just $10. But they often run sales, like they did last week, where everything is 80% off. Then you can get $25 gift certificates for $2! So that's what I did. If you use restaurant.com, be sure to read the fine print! Our $25 gift certificate was only valid on a $35 dinner. So you can't really get a free meal as there are always stipulations for using the gift certificate. Our meal was about $47 after tip. But with the gift certificate, we only had to pay $22, which saved us quite a bit!

Then it was time to go to the Fox! This was the 5th musical that we have seen there; we just love going to see shows! Going to see professional shows is a very expensive habit, so it's been a while since have been able to go together. This time we were fortunate to have received a $100 gift certificate to the Fox as a Christmas gift. So we got 2 great seats in the first row of the balcony for just $7 total!

We saw In the Heights and loved it. It was really good. If it is playing in your area, you should go see it! It's a fairly new musical (I think it originated on Broadway in 2007), so I don't think too many people are familiar with it. The theater was not very full, which surprised us. And it kind of made me sad, because a lot of people missed out on a great show!

So, we had an enjoyable night out, and it was made even more enjoyable by the fact that I didn't feel like we were spending too much money! I love getting good deals!