Shopping Road Trip

So we had the day off yesterday because of the holiday. What better way to spend the time than by engaging in the sport of shopping?

You didn't realize shopping was a sport? Well, there's an objective. Scoop up the best stuff at the best price. There are strategies and tactics to achieve the objectives such as “stalking” merchandise to get the best sale price before someone else beats you to it.

Shopping often requires stamina and endurance to see it through to the end. Like the tortoise and hare, slow and steady often wins the race. In my family, the training starts early in life; if you can't keep up, you get left at home.

Yesterday, we chose to point the car east and headed to St. Louis. Our St. Louis road trips follow a familiar layout. We start at the farthest point and work our way back. You can even divide the trip into periods, though yesterday we only had three, instead of the usual four.

We begin at the Saint Louis Galleria, which has two levels of stores and includes some of my favorite such as MAC and Nine West. Of course the big department stores anchor the mall. And I always have to visit The Coach Store. (Note I said visit).

I have a thing for shoes, so I've gotta hit all the shoe departments in the big stores as well as the shoe stores. If there’s a sale, I’m in trouble and it doesn’t matter if I don’t have a thing to go with them. You can always find something later. (Right, Mom?)

There are some great restaurant options for lunch, and then it's split up and head out. We've discovered that the other great thing about the shoe department is that it’s a logical place to meet up after you’ve scored your stuff. All those chairs make a great waiting room for the first to show up. You meet up there and then just like the end of the first quarter in a football game, it’s time to change to the other goalpost.

For what amounts to the second period of our game, we headed to West County Mall. This is another two-level monument to shopping. It has some of the same stores, but there are some different ones, like Nordstrom’s. The beauty of stopping here is that you can search out the things that you couldn’t find at your first stop such as the sizes and colors that eluded you. I snagged some great sweaters at The Limited. Buy one, get one half off. Score!

For the third period, we moved again. This time we stopped at Chesterfield Mall. I looked at more shoes. (No surprise there) I also checked out some winter coats that were marked down. I talked myself out of the coat. Not practical. Chesterfield has just undergone a renovation and I had to do some walking to figure out where everything was. This is the mall where I like to visit Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma. I just love going in those stores.

We finally sat down for dinner, then headed back home. There’s one other great thing about this kind of shopping day. Walking those malls counts as exercise!