Weekend in the Twin Cities

I hope my readers had a good weekend. I had told Travalon about the extensive skywalk system in Minneapolis that I had discovered while there for a work conference years ago, and he agreed that we should check it out sometime this winter, so this past weekend seemed like a perfect time to do it. Friday morning we got up and hit the road, getting to Minneapolis in the mid-afternoon. The first thing I wanted to see was the Valspar factory; as a child I would see it and think it was some wonderful place because it was painted such vivid colors, but Ma Hat said it was just a factory. I thought it must have been a FUN factory! Yes, maybe they made funs there! This was decades ago, and I had found photos of it online but was unsure if it still had the wild paint job. Answer: yes and no. Part of it is still painted in beautiful bright colors, but the main part no longer is. However, it was right near where we needed to be, and we found a place to park for $4 and entered the skywalk system. It goes in a huge loop with branches going off of it, and we went to Target Field where the Twins play and searched for a gorgeous Gothic-style Episcopal church I had seen from the skywalk all those years earlier. We got kind of lost and did end up seeing the church, then we ended up back at the Hyatt where we had entered the system and had a cheese pizza at their bar. I asked if we could drive by the church, and wouldn’t you know it was right on the way to our hotel! We had ended up walking seven miles, so once we got to our hotel, we just soaked in the hot tub. I have to tell my readers that this is an amazingly cheap form of entertainment, as well as a great way to get exercise when it is cold out, but be forewarned that there is a shocking lack of public bathrooms along the skywalk. Fortunately on a Friday night the pubs along the skywalk were so busy that they didn’t notice us popping in just to use the loo.

Saturday we went to the Mall of America and toured the aquarium, which wasn’t there the last time I had been there decades ago. It was very cool, and I took pictures and videos that I will post at some point. We explored the indoor amusement park and ended up buying just a few things: I got a little stuffed alpaca at the alpaca store, Travalon bought himself a North Stars hat (that’s the hockey team that was there when I was a kid), and he bought me a tie-dyed hoodie from a store that gives a share of the profits to animal shelters. There was a big show at the Mall for Chinese New Years, with lots of music and big dancing dragons. Then we had lunch at a wonderful Tibetan restaurant somewhere in St. Paul on the way to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory. If you are in the Twin Cities, you have to check this place out – it’s just a suggested donation of $5 (you don’t even have to pay) for both parts. To our surprise, in the gift shop Travalon found a little stuffed red panda that was a smaller version of the one I gave him for Christmas, which he calls Randy Panda, so he got this one and said it was his little brother, Andy Panda. He even made up a back story for them on our ride home. We visited the Cathedral of St. Paul, where my readers will be stunned to learn that I bought a rosary. We also went to the capital building, but it was not open. We headed home and had a celebratory New Year’s dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Mauston. One of the guys who works there told us how they celebrate the Lunar New Year back in his village in China, and it sounded amazing. We had walked another six miles that day, so once we got home, we just went to bed.

Yesterday was so beautiful that we wanted to hike, even though we were both a little sore. We had brunch at the Green Lantern in McFarland and then hiked on the boardwalk right by it, which was about two miles. We were going to go to the health club and soak in their hot tub, but we were too tired so we just went to the Parched Eagle by our house for beer and pizza and a rousing game of Travel Scrabble. After we got home, we soaked in our own hot tub. I had some floating candles, but after two of them got swamped, I just set them all on the side of the tub. We also have two rubber duckies courtesy of Kathbert, so we played with those too. They don’t have a backstory… yet. 

Famous Hat