Chicago

Thursday night brought us to Chicago, where we stayed with my Uncle Doug. We called my Aunt and Uncle at nearly the last minute and surprised them with 4 people. They were wonderful and accommodated all of us. Both my aunt and uncle have Motorola Droids, and the first hour or two we were there was primarily composed of showing each other Droid apps and features we had discovered.

Following the droid party, we all went out for pizza in down town Wheaton.

Friday morning we went downtown and had breakfast at Lou Mitchells with my Uncle.

From Lou Mitchells we headed to the Sears/Willis tower. It loomed over the city. This one building contains more people than the entire town I live in.

We went up to the top of the tower. They have recently added a new Plexiglas room that lets you walk out onto a glass floor that floats above the city.

Standing on a completely see through floor 103 stories in the air affects us all a little differently...

After spending a little time roaming the city, we were able to catch up with a friend of ours that we met playing World of Warcraft nearly 6 years ago that lives in Chicago. Stellartouch, a night elf priest, took us to the Millenium park where we admired the giant reflective bean and had lunch.

We hit a little traffic leaving Chicago, and ended up not getting back to our house in Virginia until 4:00 AM. Saturday we'll get back in the car and drive to may parents house for my littlest sister's graduation.

Lefse

On our last day in Minneapolis we were able to relax and spend some extra time with our Aunt and Uncle and their family. It has been really wonderful getting to spend some time with them over the past week. I don't get very many opportunities to see my family since it's quite far from Virginia, so getting to know everyone a little better has been great. I just hope it wasn't too stressful having a house full of visitors for an entire week.

Anne gave me lessons on making Lefse, a traditional Norwegian desert. She also prepared some amazing ribs and rhubarb pie. I plan to share it with people in Virginia at my sister Marina's graduation next week.

Downtown Minneapolis

Tuesday we ventured to downtown Minneapolis. We started off at the sculpture garden, followed by the art museum, and then the skyways. The sculpture garden was immense, and included a giant glass carp, a square of benches with simple thoughts written on them in elegant ways, and a giant spoon and cherry.

We met up with my sister Jennifer at the park and went to a little Vietnamese place for lunch. After lunch, we made our way to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. There we saw a variety of work, including the largest piece of carved jade outside of china.

We also got to see a piece of my aunt's artwork at the museum.

After the art museum we walked downtown and toured the Minneapolis Skyways. All of the buildings downtown are connected so that you can travel anywhere downtown without going outside. This seems silly in the summer, as Minneapolis was deceivingly warm and delightful, but during the winter months it's far too cold to spend time outside.

We attempted to make it to the top of the IDS tower, the tallest building in Minneapolis, but the IDS building no longer has an observation deck at the top and they don't allow people up. Lauren and I went to the hotel that rents out a banquet hall on the 50th floor, but the hotel manager had just left and we were told we'd need to come back the next day.

After seeing the sights of downtown, we went to an Indian restaurant where we nearly killed Jennifer's boyfriend. He apparently has severe allergies to an assortment of foods that we ate at the restaurant, and he ended up finishing the night in the hospital. Hopefully he knows there are easier ways to avoid your girlfriends family then needing to leave for the hospital due to a severe allergic reaction.

MOA and The Science Museum

We explored the science museum and Mall of America on Monday.

My cousin, who volunteers at the science museum, gave us a back stage tour of the inner workings of the science museum. We saw the workshops where exhibits are prototyped and made, and toured the staff only parts of the museum. My cousin has a car he made in a highschool project that runs off of pressure in an accumulator that's stored from a little 2 horse power engine. It gets 160 miles per gallon, and goes about 30 miles an hour.

We also found some ancient bacon.

We went on to Mall of America where we shopped around, and did the backstage tour of the Aquarium.