Why is there a roller coaster?

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After a slow morning, we got up and moving on a mission: to see some artsy stuff, and check out the biggest mall in the country.

We started at Mall of America. It's about a 20 minute drive outside the city, but good lord is it immense. You walk in, and the central courtyard has a full amusement park. It's not just one roller coaster, it's three. And two dozen other rides. Of course, there's a couple hundred stores and cafes, an arcade, a kids area, and about 11 parking lots. And a hotel. I literally can't even explain it. We just wandered around, played some in the arcade, window shopped, did a little actual shopping, and then just laughed about there being an actual amusement park in a mall.

When we got back to the city, we went to the sculpture garden near the Walker Art Museum. It's a cool little place, with a lot of modern sculptures and nice quiet places to sit. It's also right around the corner from our Airbnb, which was convenient. From there, we walked back towards "eat street," a pedestrian street that has about 17 blocks of just restaurants and not much else. We decided to go up into the tunnel system, a brilliant thing that Boston could have used this year. About 100 (I'd guess) blocks of Minneapolis are connected by second-story tunnels that run outside security so anyone can use them. Inside, it's almost like a mall itself, with stores lining the halls. And it's great for their notoriously frigid winters.

We took that all the way to the Mississippi, where we looked at the only waterfalls on the river and just hung out for a bit. In the evening, we walked over to Acme, a local comedy club that has open-mic shows on Monday nights. As could be expected, some were amazing, some were horrific. None got booed off, although you could tell people were sometimes tempted. We went with a decently sized group, as Laura and Serena know a girl there, who brought along some more friends. So it was pretty fun. After that, we went and got pizza and then went home to sleep. Tomorrow, we're up early and on our way to our last stop!

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