Frozen Falls and Eagles After All

 

This morning we got up and had breakfast at our hotel. Here are some photos from the outside of the hotel, showing its railroad history.

Then we went to Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul, and right after the opening hymn the cantor sang something in Latin - the introit I guess - and all I really caught was something about the light of God and the whole world, but it was so beautiful that I cried. Really, I wish Mass would always start that way... but Travalon doesn't love that "ipso et calypso" stuff, so he was less impressed. Here are some photos he took of the Cathedral.

After that we drove to Minnehaha Falls, a place I remembered visiting as a child. I remembered scrambling all over the frozen falls back then, but now the stairs down are blocked off for the winter, although that didn't stop the twenty-somethings from going down there.

Don't we look like we're freezing?

At my advanced age, I am not brave enough to face those scary steps. Then we drove around and found this cool tower.

We stopped for gas at a Sinclair station that had this inflatable Dino wearing a gas attendant hat.

We found a Nepalese restaurant that we realized was the same one we ate at during a previous trip, and they are still just as good. Then we went to our bed and breakfast on a fixed-up towboat.

I'm sure it would be lovely to stay at in the summer, when we could sit out on the decks, but it has its own charm in the winter. Here is the view from the pilot house.

Here are a couple of shots of our room.

Yes, that's me reflected in the mirror. One wonderful thing we discovered is that there is a tree right near this boat where all sorts of bald eagles hang out. This weekend was Eagle Days in Sauk, and we were a little sad to miss it, but we got to see eagles after all.

We could hear them talking to each other, and they don't scream like in music videos, they sort of twitter. We also had a wonderful view of downtown St. Paul from the deck of the boat.

This is the Cathedral where we went to Mass - we can see it from the boat.

 As twilight fell, the lights of the city (and the boat) came up.

Travalon wanted to see Union Station, so we drove to it and parked. We saw the light rail stopped right in front of it, so we bought some tickets (cheap entertainment - $4 for two of us), and we rode it to the end of the line in downtown Minneapolis. We got off and went to the Loon Cafe, since that seemed like the thing to do in Minnesota, and we had wild rice soup and walleye for dinner. I was fascinated by this sign they had there:

(Ignore the Timberwolves game underneath.) You can see that the vertical word is "Lose," and I thought the bottom work was "Yikes," but finally I realized it was "Vikes," as in the Vikings. Not sure what the third, burned-out word was. We both think it was "Twins" and "Stars" mushed together, but the North Stars are no longer in Minnesota. We took the Green Line back to Union Station. Here are some photos.

The skyway was still open, surprisingly, so we took it back to where we had parked. We had already walked over five miles today and didn't feel like doing any more skyway walking, so we came back to the boat. Here is the view at night.

We can even see train tracks, so when I heard a train whistle, I looked up, and it was the Empire Builder going by, right on time. Travalon and I have both taken this train to Seattle, although not together. Maybe someday we will take it to Glacier National Park, where he worked one summer when he was young.

Famous Hat