The Déjà Vu Comedy Club has hosted some of America’s finest comedians, including Dennis Leary, Bobcat Goldthwait, Tim Allen, to name just a few. Local up-and-comers fill out the line-up at this very popular club – reservations are strongly recommended.

Like your creepy crawlies? The University of Missouri’s Entomology Museum is open to the public and is home to more than six million specimens of insects, arachnids, and fossils, with a heavy focus on the aquatic insects from the Ozarks.

The Museum of Art and Archaeology has a wide-ranging collection of artifacts from Greco-Roman times to the present and spanning the world, as well as an art collection that runs from the renaissance to the present. The Archaeology half of the museum has a strong focus on ancient Greece, Rome, and the Near East, while the Fine Art half is strongest in its American and European collections. Temporary exhibits plug in the gaps with visiting collections of artifacts and paintings from around the world. Art aficionados will be pleased to find that Columbia is also home to a large number of independent galleries for a city of its size.

You’ll want to spend some time wandering around The District – even the article is capitalized – Columbia’s youthful, artistic, and trendy community. The District is home to pleasant sidewalk cafes, martini bars, pubs and restaurants, live music joints, and independent shops housed in a mix of historic and modern buildings situated between the city’s three colleges. Everything from fine dining, shopping, culture, to hard partying can be had in what the local businesses call “43 not-so-square blocks in the center of Columbia.”