Minneapolis St Paul

Minneapolis - Day 7 & 8
Monday 16 - Tuesday 17-Oct-2006

Ah, Minneapolis. Two days of luxury. No hostel. No queuing for a shower. This was going to be good!

For two whole days I was spoilt by the generosity of Rachel, Doug, Kelsey & Eric and them letting my stay with them for a couple of days. And Rachel was like my own private tour guide!

She drove me everywhere.

The Mall of America was our first destination. It was not quite what I was expecting but I wasn't disappointed either. The amusement park inside was crazy!

There was a great scrapbook store there called Archivers. It was huge and had all the latest and greatest things. I spent a bit of time in there. Poor Rachel. Seriously, I could have spent all day there.

On the way home we toured some of the 'well to do' areas of greater Minneapolis. Some of those houses have to be seen to be believed!

In the evening, I was lucky enough to get to see a concert at Kelsey's school. American high schools fascinate me. They are so completely different to those in Australia. In some ways better. In some ways not so good. The concert was very good and the talent those kids have was something I never witnessed at Gully High, let me tell you!

On Tuesday, we hit downtown Minneapolis (freezing @ 7c) and St Paul. The guy who created the Peanuts (Charlie Brown and Snoopy) comes from the area so there are these bronze statues of the characters in a park in St Paul. They were kinda cute.

We also went to visit the State Capital Building. It amazes me that every state has one of those and they all pretty much look the same. We actually went in and attached ourselves to a tour in progress. The ladies at the information counter were very excited that I was from Australia because they didn't have a 'pin' on their October's Visitor's map from Australia yet. One of the other ladies wanted to know if people in Australia were as sad about Steve Irwin's death as the were here in the USA. That was the second time I've been asked that question. He is/was quite the celebrity here.

But the coolest thing we visited was a GIANT Spoon and Cherry sculpture. It was really bizarre but looked great! There wasn't snow on it when we visited but it felt like it was going to snow at any minute!

Later in the evening we headed out to a Pumpkin Patch to pick some pumpkins for Halloween. The particular pumpkin patch we found was looking very sorry for itself but Rachel was able to find at least a few. It seems the whole country is gearing up for Halloween in a couple of weeks time.

It was my last night in Minneapolis, and for dinner we had a home cooked meal finished off with Pumpkin Pie. I'd mentioned that even though we do have pumpkins in Australia we ate them as a vegetable and not a sweet. The pie was good - once I got passed the psychological aspect of eating pumpkin with cream on top!

A big thanks to Rachel, Doug, Kelsey and Eric (and Fluffers) for making my visit to Minneapolis such a pleasant one. I really did appreciate all the trouble they went to. I can't say how guilty I felt when poor Doug had to get out of bed at 5:40am to drop off at the train station.

At 7:50am the train was pulling out of Minneapolis St Paul and I was on my way to Boston. Another 36 hour journey by train, or in this case, three trains...