Minneapolis, Minnesota

The best types of trips are spontaneous ones, and this one was partially that! I had been eyeing flights to Minneapolis for awhile and the opportunity to visit finally presented itself. I have a coworker whose fiancé happens to work for United, so the three of us pass-rode up to Minneapolis. We arrived around 10:30am, stopped at their hotel to drop off bags (super cute hotel), and headed to the Mall of America. Every store you can imagine and then more had to be there. An amusement park inside of a mall? Wow. After roaming aimlessly and in awe, we settled on eating lunch at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. I had a pretty good piece of blackened mahi-mahi and a delicious mango daiquiri. It might have been a virgin daiquiri because I couldn’t taste the alcohol, but either way it was great. After lunch, we played some games in the amusement park arcade. The way the park works is a point system. You can either purchase a full day pass or buy rides and games in points. $20 bought us about 25 minutes of arcade games.

Since the weather was so nice (70 and sunny) we decided to pop over to Minnehaha Regional Park. We visited Minnehaha Falls, a crashing waterfall right by the entrance of the park. The fall leaves were not quite as bright as the Colorado aspens, but there were still more rusty autumn leaves.

We then went back to the mall to the Sea Life Aquarium inside of the mall. Check on Groupon for coupons; we were able to get $6 off of the adult ticket price of $26. My favorite part of the aquarium was a 300 foot tunnel through a fish tank. You can walk through different types of fish, such as the amazon fish and a shark portion. At the very end there is a sting ray tank and a touch tank with starfish and anemone that you can touch.

Since my Airbnb was so close to Minnehaha Falls, I took a sunset walk to the park. Dinner was at Bulls Horn Food and Drink, right across the street from the Airbnb. I ordered the pizza burger, a burger with mozarella cheese, pepperoni, marinara sauce, and caramelized onions. Would recommend.

I went to bed early for my early morning flight. At the airport I bought some freshly ground coffee from Roasting Plant and I have to say it was one of the best cups I’ve ever had.