Washington State
July 7 – 18, 2022
Today Denice and I are setting off on an adventure with a circuitous route at the beginning. Marijeanne and Don Gorectke are driving us to O’Hare Airport in Chicago so that we can catch a flight to Minneapolis. While our eventual destination is the state of Washington, the only decent flight we could get goes Milwaukee to Minneapolis with an overnight layover and then on to the West. We decide to make a day of it in Minneapolis rather than sit in the airport overnight.
We left our house in Milwaukee, got to O’Hare by 4:00 PM, grabbed a bite to eat and then caught the 7:00 PM flight to the Twin Cities. I must have fell asleep on the plane because that was the quickest hour and one half I don’t remember.
We thought there would be an easy shuttle to our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn Minneapolis Airport Mall of America (winner of the hotel with the longest name), but instead we caught a gypsy cab that cost us way to much money to get to the hotel. While our room was available, the restaurant was closed, so supper for me tonight consisted of a pot pie I bought from the concessions made in the microwave in our room.
Friday, July 8, 2022
All we wanted to do today was go get our rental car back at the airport. The inconvenience started when the hotel told us the only shuttle we could get on left at 7:00 AM while we were told that Budget Rental would not open until 8:00 AM.
We decided to go but when we got to the airport it all got weirder. Nothing was open for food on our side of the gates and the rental counter said we had to go to level “M” to get our car. When we went up to M the sign said they would not be open until 9:00 AM. We were in Terminal 2 so we decided to see what the rental place at Terminal 1 said. To access that we had to ride a tram from one terminal to the other.
At the main rental counter at Terminal 1 it told us to go up to their version of “M” which we did only to find a long line of similarly confused and slightly angry renters waiting for a car. As it turned out, our wait was not that long and by 8:30 AM we were on the road for today’s adventures in Minneapolis.
Our first stop was The Bad Waitress, a restaurant/grill with some pop art pizzaz and good food which kept me from dying from a diabetic fit. On our walk back to the museum I took a few minutes to shoot some Minneapolis wall art.
Next stop was the Minnesota Institute of Art where we met up with Carrie Davis, a former teaching colleague of Denice’s for a day of art.
We had timed tickets for “Van Gogh and the Olive Groves.” This collection is the art surrounding the olive groves of Saint-Rémy which Vincent van Gogh painted in his last year of life. The exhibit was small but very educational about van Gogh and inspiring to see.
The next exhibit we saw was “Dressed by Nature: Textiles of Japan” which was a fascinating look at both the artistic creation and the utilitarian outcome of the clothing of historic Japan.
The rest of the collections in this museum are worth a visit even if the main galleries are not of interest.
Although we had a total of four museums on our list, we never got out of the MIA. After leaving MIA we found a few more examples of wall art.
When we could not walk anymore we drove to Burnsville where Carrie and her husband Dan live. The four of us went out to eat at the Mediterranean Cruise Café where we ordered way to much food but it was all good.
Luckily for us, returning our rental turned out to be much easier than getting it. We are trying to get to bed early tonight as we have to set the alarm for 2:30 AM tomorrow in order to make our flight out of Minneapolis to Seattle.
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