Minnesota, uff da!
Jen and I decided to visit Minnesota after a ten year hiatus on my part… and I’m really glad we did. It was a ton of fun. I moved before I was really an adult, so I forgot how nice the downtown area is. Clean, walkable, great shopping and food, decent transportation, and gorgeous weather. We stayed at the downtown Hilton and while I might not stay there again, I was very happy to be reminded of how nice downtown is.
We took a super early morning flight out so we had a pretty full day of exploring Minneapolis before we could check into the hotel. We started off by checking out Lake Minnetonka.
While in the area we also explored Excelsior (where my mom’s store was), my old high school, and drove around the old neighborhood. We found time to see my old house, but no one was home. I wish we could have seen the inside, but all I managed to get was a quick snapshot from the driveway.
One of Jen’s favorite stories is about a car full of my ludicrously named friends driving their car into a pond after a firecracker incident in the car. This is that pond.
We also made time to drive over to Wayzata Country Club to see my old haunts. It’s still gorgeous.
While in the town of Wayzata we stopped by D’Amico and Sons for some awesome pasta salad, and unofficially kicked off a food trip. We did a lot of good eating.
D’Amico and Sons
Hell’s Kitchen, which ended up being shockingly good. Jen ordered some really good Lemon-Ricotta Hotcakes.
And Adele’s Frozen Custard, which kicks the crap out of Ted Drewe’s.
Our trip turned out to be largely about eating and shopping (other than the state fair that I gave it’s own entry), so it’s on to the shopping!
The Mall of America was obviously a draw for making the trip in the first place; Jen loves malls! And the Mall of America is so big that it has an amusement park in the middle.
We got in line for the Log Flume and Jen was very excited.
Well, it turns out when you put two grown adults into the front of a log flume the front will dive and your purse will fill with flume water. Jen was less than amused when they took our picture. I really wish we had bought it!
Speaking of water… We also rented a jetski for the day! Jen had never been on one before, we could see all the fancy houses (note: some are the size of your average neighborhood), see the yacht club I learned to race sailboats at, enjoy the lake (I sorely miss having non-river bodies of water to play in), and hoon around on a jet ski.
I got in trouble for driving too wild and throwing Jen off the back. BIG TROUBLE. Several minutes later, Jen returned the favor by throwing me off at 50mph. I lost a shoe and my shorts!
Seeing as this was an eating trip, we also drove the boat to Maynard’s for lunch. Driving a boat to a restaurant is awesome.
It was a very busy trip, and I’ll close it out with a few more random pictures… Including a multiple story Target! Jen’s in heaven!
