In Which There Is a Great Glass Elevator

Sadly the end of the holiday was looming. Sunday was a relaxed day, which involved a leisurely and tasty breakfast with Gayle & M, followed by an afternoon in which I made it all the way to the hotel patio with my book, to enjoy the sunshine and a nice cool drink.

On Monday, I had thought it would be interesting to visit the Weisman Museum. However, it turns out that it is not open on Mondays. Nor is the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which was my second choice. (Did I mention that forward planning isn’t my strongest point?)

So I reconsidered by plans and decided, instead, to pay a visit to the Mill City Museum instead. Old Flour mills (or, new flour mills, come to think of it) are not high on any list of my interests, but I thought that it might be worth a visit, and anyway, it has a observation deck and is in the heart of downtown Minneapolis.

It was more fun than I expected. I hardly got lost at all finding it, and although I didn’t find the museum’s collection of ‘ the Staypuft man’ memorabilia very thrilling, I liked the traction engine, the kitchens (with different types of bread to taste).

There is then a tour which involves going up in a converted freight elevator and stopping on various floors for recorded information and then you get out at the 8th floor, and can go up to the 9th where there is an observation deck with excellent views over the Mississippi and a great glass elevator all the way back down to the ground.

As I was at the top looking down, I saw a whole tour group of people doing the Segway tour.. looked interesting.

After exhausting the possibilities of the museum I met Aleta, and we went for lunch at Hells Kitchen , where there was good food and good company - bison burger and sweet potato fries...Mmmmm.

Aleta then took me on a driving tour around downtown Minneapolis, which I really enjoyed. I got to see the outside of the Wiesman (Which is well worth seeing as a building, even if you can’t get in). Maybe next time I shall see the inside, too.

And when we had finished, I managed to get back to the hotel without getting lost, too. Although I did find that I had managed to lose my ipod at some point during the day, which with an 8 hour flight, 6 hour wait in airport and 4 hour train journey ahead of me, was a little annoying.