St. Louis dating, outside the same old circle.

Thirteen hundred acres, larger than Central Park, means a walk here can quietly stretch another loop or wind down at the Grand Basin, so neither of you has to be the one who announces the evening is over. It is also the one piece of ground people from every side of the metro will drive to, so choosing it costs nobody a concession.

The hour before sunset from Art Hill is the best of it. No admission, no closing bell, and enough ground that you can decide how long the walk lasts once you are in it.

In a city where the first question sorts people, a gallery gives you something better to react to than where you grew up — and the Beckmann holdings here are the largest in any public collection, so there is plenty to disagree about. General admission costs nothing, which takes the who-pays question off the table before you have met.

The galleries hold the same temperature in February as in July, general admission costs nothing, and half an hour inside is a complete first meeting if that is all either of you wanted.

Every few minutes the setting changes completely — the Climatron dome, the old Victorian beds, the Japanese garden and its koi lake — so the conversation gets handed a new subject before either of you has to invent one. The loop around that lake is one of the few places where walking quietly beside someone reads as deliberate rather than awkward.

Ticketed, unhurried and best in daylight; spring and fall are the peak, and the glass conservatory keeps it worth doing in the dead of a St. Louis winter.

Crawling through a ten-story former shoe factory rebuilt out of salvaged bridges, chimneys and a retired plane does something a bar table cannot: nobody stays polished for long, and neither of you is asking what the other does for a living. It is the fastest way to find out whether a person can drop their guard.

Ticketed, loud and physical, and better late in the evening when the crowd skews adult — wear shoes and clothes you can actually climb in.

Almost everyone raised around here rode to the top on a school trip, which gives two locals an opening that says nothing about which side of town they came from. The lawn and the museum underneath are free, and the riverfront belongs to no one's neighborhood, so the meeting can run short or long without either of you deciding in advance.

Ground level asks nothing of you but the weather — cooler months and dusk are kindest — and the museum underneath gives you somewhere to go when the wind comes off the river.

A Saturday morning under the sheds is the least loaded slot this city offers: you are walking, sampling and pointing at things instead of interrogating each other across two coffees, and buying one thing each to eat on a bench is a genuinely low-stakes hour. It also sits off the usual evening circuit, so you are less likely to run into whoever your friends were out with last night.

Saturday morning is the whole point here. Walking the sheds costs nothing, the noise covers any lull in the conversation, and Soulard's brick streets start at the far end if the hour is going well.

The ornate pavilions scattered along the drives break the loop into stops, so a walk here becomes a series of small pauses instead of one long march you have to keep talking through. It also sits between Tower Grove South and Shaw, which makes getting a drink afterward a two-block decision rather than a second drive across town.

Free and open all day; in season a Saturday morning adds a farmers market and live music, which helps if you would rather not carry the whole conversation.

You learn more from watching which section someone drifts into than from twenty minutes of questions, and handing each other a book is about the lowest-risk way to flirt there is. It sits on Euclid, one of the few stretches in St. Louis where a bookstore, a coffee and a drink are all within a block, so the evening can keep going without anyone getting back in a car.

Browsing costs nothing and nobody hurries you out, so an hour here is an easy amount to agree to before either of you commits to a whole evening.

Order a concrete — the custard is thick enough that the person at the window turns it upside down to prove it will not fall out — and how somebody orders theirs tells you a little before you have asked anything. There is no table to be stuck at either: you stand in the lot, you eat, and the meeting closes itself, which is what a lot of people want before committing to a real evening.

A walk-up window with a parking lot and no seats; warm evenings bring a line, and it lands better as a second stop than as the whole date.