The nearest airport to St. Louis is Lambert International Airport (STL). There are no direct flights to St. Louis from the UK, but it is possible to book flights to STL with a layover elsewhere in the US. A drive from the airport to downtown St. Louis takes about 25 minutes.
Normally it is cheaper to book a flight to O’Hare Airport (ORD) in Chicago and either take an internal flight to St. Louis, hire a car and drive (approx. 5 hours/300 miles) or take the Amtrak train from Union Station in Chicago to St. Louis. We recommend the Texas Eagle train, which has a dedicated viewing car and decent dining options. If you book a flight with Aer Lingus to Chicago via Dublin, then you have the benefit of going through US immigration in Dublin and saving yourself the hassle of passport control when you land in Chicago.
Once in St. Louis, public transportation is not recommended. If you aren’t hiring a car, we would suggest using either Uber, Lyft or a taxi to get between any St. Louis locations. St. Louis has a higher rate of gun crime than our UK guests will be used to, and therefore walking isn’t normally recommended – even for locations that are relatively near each other. In general, North St. Louis and East St. Louis are areas to avoid. The places we’ve listed in the Visiting STL section are in generally safe areas of the city.
