Minneapolis, Again

On Sunday, we walked to Hell's Kitchen for breakfast.  That's a standard Minneapolis treat for Walker and me.  I am crazy over their lemon ricotta hot cakes.  They moved to a new, huge space, added a bar, and started serving dinner and late night snacks.  Their space is beautiful and their food is great.  It's a bit of a splurge, though, so one stop per trip is our limit.

After breakfast we ducked into Macy's.  They have a tradition at the holidays, a beautiful walk-through display with a holiday theme.  This year, again, the theme was "A Day in the Life of an Elf".  It's a cute display but one we have seen twice before.  They used to switch it up every year.  My family hadn't seen it yet, so off we went. 

Time to start the day!

Building snowmen

Making breakfast before a busy day ~

Elf school! 

Leading the Christmas Tree Chior

Incoming letters for Santa

I love the expression on this mailman's face ~

Holiday treat factory - YUM!

The Santa Land area is rather dimly lit.  The camera I was using is one I've had for about a year, but I rarely use it.  My little Minolta pocket camera that took great photos died right before this trip, and the big SLR camera I favor was too big to comfortably carry around with me.  So I did the best I could with the "middle" camera, but the photos aren't great.  I know the camera is capable of taking great shots in low light, but I have to learn how to set it properly.  Here's one of all the rude people who stood in front of us at the parade.  It's about the best shot I got after dark on Saturday, and it isn't very good:

 


So anyway:  we needed to be out of the hotel by noon.  It was after 11 when we left Macy's, so we had to hustle.  My mom and Diva rode home with Walker and me.  Originally I had planned to stop at Trader Joe's in Rochester, just to check them out, but my house sitter was not comfortable wrestling with Ernie to giver her all her meds ,so I thought we'd better just get home. The weather looked to be coming in, too.  My mom wanted to stop, though.  She needed to stretch her legs.  So we stopped, calling it a restroom break.  This Trader Joe's has a game for the kids:  find the "goose on the loose" somewhere in the store, tell the cashier where he was, and earn a "reward".  Diva took the challenge and found that plush goose hanging out in the Christmas display above the deli area.  She chose a lollypop for her reward.  I bought myself a treat - Cocoa Almond Butter - and we were back on the road.


The rain started shortly after everyone got home.  The good news is, the drop in temps that was predicted didn't happen, so it isn't freezing.  The bad news is, it's supposed to hang around for a couple days.  Hopefully those temps will stay up.

I would call this year's Holidazzle a success, despite the rudeness of our fellow parade goers on Saturday.  I was hoping it would go better, because I doubt my mom will want to go back again.  It's just getting harder for her to travel.  I'm not sure what I would have done differently, except maybe to choose a different corner to watch the parade.  The important thing is, we all enjoyed the experience together.

Happy Holidazzle, Peeps!

Can you guess what we did after dinner?  It was pretty dang cold out there on the street for the Holidazzle parade, but we made a pit stop at the hotel to add another layer of clothing before we lined up along the parade route.  This is one show that never gets old!  I didn't get too many photos because I had to take my gloves off to work my camera, and because the guy standing next to me kept sticking his smart phone right in my line of vision to get his own shots.  Grrrrr!  But we had a good time, just the same.  Here are a couple of the better ones, though you can see the phone guy's phone in the bottom corner of the third one.

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Fondue for Two

Friday afternoon, Walker and I packed up and hit the road.  Our destination?  Downtown Minneapolis, baby!

My love affair with downtown Minneapolis started many years ago, when I took my first-ever business "trip" alone to the Federal Reserve District Nine offices for a training seminar.  I drove myself in my Olds 98, a huge boat of a car that rode so smooth it felt like you were driving a living room.  I felt very grown up in my navy blue "power suit" and high heels.  I don't know how I did it, but I found my way to downtown so easily that I had two hours to kill before my seminar, so I wandered Nicollet Mall.

I remember going into what was then the Dayton's flagship store (it's now Macy's) to buy a headband, after my big 80's hair went flat on my drive up.  I also remember the prices in Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman-Marcus.  I took a photo of myself in a photo booth somewhere along the Mall.  I bought little gifts for the two  guys I was dating (yep, two, but I was young and they both knew I was seeing "other people"), and I remember changing into jeans and a thick sweatshirt in my car after the seminar.  Probably would not do that now.  I had to drive back the same day, but what a fabulous time I had wandering downtown before, and after, my training.

The thing that fascinates me about downtown is, when you look at most of the buildings from the street they look like ordinary office buildings.  But step inside!  There are little cities behind those facades.  In one building you can shop, eat, work, party, and make your way home to an apartment upstairs.  You just have no idea what you'll find when you enter one of those buildings.  To a small town girl like me, it's just this side of magic.  And the buildings have names!  How cool is that, LOL?

So nearly every year, around Christmas, we head to Minneapolis and spend a few days downtown.  We missed one year a couple years back due to snowstorms, and last year we had to skip because I was still taking radiation therapy every day.  Naturally, missing last year made this year just that much more special.  Since I plan all these trips, I decided that this year we'd try some things that neither of us had done before.  Enter the Melting Pot.

I've had fondue before, but this was a first experience at a fondue restaurant for both Walker and me.  We opted not to take the "full meal experience", since you have to allow three hours to dine for that.  Instead, we had the "cheese and chocolate" option.  The tables are inset with glass burners, like a small stove top, and  the server makes the fondue right there, right at the table, in a cook pot on the burner.  Our server heated some sherry, added scallions, stirred in shredded cheese, and finished off with some chopped green onions and bleu cheese crumbles.  She gave us long handed dipping forks, a big bowl of bread cubes, a smaller bowl of cut up veggies, and a small bowl of cubed Granny Smith apples.  Five minutes later:

Walker is very dedicated when it comes to eating cheese.  Another server stopped by just after this photo to take our empty pot away, but Walker informed her that there was still a lot of good cheese to be had.  Um, okay, honey, if you say so, LOL.  And then it was time for chocolate.

They actually light the chocolate sauce on fire.  See the blue in the pot?

Dang good stuff!  We dipped strawberries, banana slices,marshmallows, rice crispie treats, and cheesecake. 

Walker was one happy boy!