10.20 Message - MPLS

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twentieth day of the month is "Message." I have decided that I'm going to write about the last photo message I sent and/or received via text.

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So we did end up going to Minneapolis. We were there for less than 24 hours, and we did lots of things that were important to us, but let's just start with some very basic things.

The first thing we did was go to the Walker Sculpture Garden because the entire time I lived in Minneapolis, I never took my photo by the Spoonbridge and Cherry, so I had to rectify that since I am officially a tourist now and not a resident. Obviously my husband took this photo and then sent it to me. I apologize for the dumb hat, but I'm old and prone to bad reactions to everything in the world, including sunlight.

The sculpture garden has definitely increased in size since we lived there and we spent far too much time wondering about the financial state of the Walker and its acquisitions team, but you can't tell me that you don't do the same exact thing when you're at a modern art museum. The sculpture garden is open daily and is free and should be a mandatory Minneapolis stop. 

I have been utterly influenced by the world of Harry Potter and since the suits of armor animated to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts, I wonder a lot about what if some of these sculptures came to life, see especially the above Hephaestus or the below Hahn/Cock. Imagine if they suddenly started moving around!

We wandered around going to local shops we missed from our time there before going on a stroll around Lake of the Isles. Minneapolis has a lot of public parks and green spaces, but its crown jewel is the Chain of Lakes. Lake of the Isles is one of those lakes and when we were first dating, Dr. BB lived a block off of it and we used to walk around it for hours and hours. We just did one lap this time (just over 2.5 miles).

I absolutely love our town and our house, but if I had lottery money, I would buy a house on Lake of the Isles and live there year round. 

From there, we ordered pizza from Pizza Luce and took it back to our hotel (a random Hampton Inn by the airport - nothing special) to eat. Pizza Luce is the only place that claims to have gluten-free food that we have eaten at and Dr. BB has not been sick. Plus, their pizzas are delicious. We ordered a GF Pizza Athena (minus red onions) and a GF Baked Potato Pizza (minus bacon) and they were so good. We ate some of it for dinner and I had cold pizza for breakfast the next day. This was our only meal out - the rest we packed in a cooler. 

I did have a cupcake!

The next day we did something that might make you roll your eyes, but I was very excited about. We went to the Mall of America where I replaced a bunch of my University of Minnesota gear. I have one Minnesota hoodie and I've been babying it for years. I've replaced the zipper on it multiple times, but the sleeves are legitimately frayed in an irreparable way. I wanted a full zip and while I wasn't able to find one in maroon (I got black), I had to settle because my current one is no longer an option. I also got a couple of long-sleeve t-shirts, some postcards (natch), and some popcorn. 

I had somehow forgotten the scope of MoA. It's just enormous.

Then we went back to the Chain of Lakes to walk around Lake Harriet because this was our lake when we first got married. We lived a few blocks away from it and even got our engagement pictures taken there. (No one asked, but I prefer our engagement photos to our wedding photos. The wedding photos are WONDERFUL, but the engagement photos show our true selves a lot more.) The lake is the same, but the rose garden has expanded quite a bit and it was BUSY there. Like, we were there on a Thursday in the late morning/early afternoon and there were so many people there!

We tried to recreate some of those engagement photos, but it turns out neither of us is a professional photog. Hey, if you're getting married in the Twin Cities, Barclay Horner is still around!

This trip around Lake Harriet meant I could cross "go to the beach" off my summer to-do list. Woot woot!

We ate lunch by the bandshell and the sailboats and then headed home to go get the dog from the sitter. All in all, a delightful tiny getaway.

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If you could blink your eyes and instantly be transported somewhere for 24 hours, where would it be?