Greetings from Downtown Minneapolis!

Saturday, September 14, 2024

 

Wow!  Up this morning about 6:30, and after showering, the first thing on my agenda was to get the laundry done.  I hadn’t done any since Durango, and things had definitely been piling up!  So, down to the first floor and into the tiny laundry room.  Only one washer and dryer, so I was hoping I’d be the first one there – and I was!  Yay!  Took about half-an-hour to wash, and another hour or so to dry, so we were able to get repacked and out of the hotel about 9:30 this morning.  And, we now have all completely clean and dry clothes – at least for one day!

 

The drive to Minneapolis was fine, and much less boring that driving across South Dakota!  

 

[Note - Margaret takes exception to Minnesota’s motto “Land of 10,000 Lakes”.  “Big deal”, she says, “Michigan has more than 66,000 lakes!”  I say, “Good news for mosquitoes.” – R]

Seriously, this place had all three!  All it needed was a book store!

Minnesota River heading toward Minneapolis

We took the freeway for the first hour or so, and then headed northeast on highways after that. Around 11:30 am we came upon an A&W, which sounded really good, so stopped for lunch … they managed to screw up our order (we came up a hot dog short) but it eventually got straightened out, with large mugs of root beer.  Really do enjoy A&W occasionally!  

 

From there, it was only about 2 more hours to Minneapolis, and the drive, which followed the Minnesota River part of the way, was fairly easy until we got into the suburbs – and then, wow, talk about awful traffic!  It was surprising, actually, seeing that it was a Saturday early afternoon, but it seems that there were a plethora of accidents, added to the road maintenance, that seemed to be going on everywhere!  However, thanks to Maggie, my iPad, I was able to guide us fairly easily into town and to our Hampton Inn Minneapolis Downtown.  

 

As R pointed out, oftentimes staying anywhere – especially older cities – “downtown” is difficult, because of older buildings and one-way streets and parking issues.  We hit all three today!  We were able to pull up and stop in front of the hotel.  R went inside and came back with a luggage cart, as well as our room keys (Room 927), parking passes, and instructions on how to get to the parking garage.

 

If you’ve never been to downtown Minneapolis (we have been, once before, but just to overnight, and we never really left the hotel, as it had a nice restaurant, and there was no need to leave!) it is filled with older brick buildings – and one-way streets – and of course, our hotel was located on one.  The parking garage is across the street and was filled with cars!  We were parked by the parking staff on the 4^th floor, in what is NOT a parking place, but they said was fine … do hope they’re right!  Not sure if we’ll be taking the car out at all until we leave on Monday morning!  We’re going to the baseball game tomorrow afternoon, and there is a “skyway” walk-way that we’ll take from our hotel to Target Stadium – about 9 minutes.  Tonight for dinner, Google says the restaurant we’re going to try is one minute away (walking) … so we’ll see what happens…for anything else, we may use Uber, just to avoid moving the car!  The fun of being downtown!!

 

So!  Needing to change clothes for dinner tonight.  Thinking of actually putting on my blue jeans, as it has been in the mid-70’s and very cloudy and blustery all day.  More later, after dinner!

 

Much love,

m

xxx

 

Okay!  Back from a truly excellent dinner!  We went out to Union, a restaurant that is actually in the process of being renamed Parlay – the lovely gal at the front desk thinks that’s a change of owner.  At any rate, they are having their “soft” opening this week, before their “real” opening next Saturday night. (And it is about 100 yards from the front door of the Hampton Inn!  I mean, we could see it on the corner when we walked out of the hotel!  Can’t get any more convenient than that!!)  We had to wait a few minutes, but then were the first folks inside!  It was really blind for us, as - with a new place - there was no menu to look at beforehand.  However, the menu was much as it had been for Union – and it looked great!  We started with salads with blue cheese dressing.  They were okay; not spectacular.  But then came our mains.  R ordered their prime beef medallions with mashed potatoes and asparagus.  Absolutely perfect!  I ordered their short rib of beef on garlic mashed potatoes with green beans – and again, just perfect!  I mean, really incredible!  I had a Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and R had Josh Cellars Chardonnay.  Neither of us had any room for dessert, which was unfortunate!  

 

House salads were lacking a bit of blue cheese...

R's medalions of beef with mashed potatoes!

My short rib of beef with mashed potatoes and green beans!

Took all of two minutes to waddle back to our hotel, and now we’re in for the night!  R reading his book, and once I’ve posted, there will be college football for me!  SO glad to say that it looks like ESPN and Disney have settled their problems with Dish, so that hopefully we’ll have ESPN as we continue our trip!! Yay!

 

Much love, and more tomorrow!

m

xxx