Thursday:
We dropped Isabella off at Karissa's mom's house around 4-4:30. It seems like a late time to go out of town, but we only had to make it to Alexandria. We got to Alexandria in good time, and checked into the L-Motel. I got a room here on purpose, because it's been a long time since I've stayed in basic, raodside motel, and I've always kind of liked them. The lady who checked me in did so as she bottle-fed her infant, all the while her son was trying to get her attention and throwing his little cushy ball around the office. Beyond them I could tell was their living room, which just made the stay better since I realized this was one of those places like the Devils Lake Topper, where an apartment is attached to the motel and the management is live-in. But fear not, it had a network connection for my laptop.
Later that night, we drove around a little bit. We accidentally didn't drive far enough to hit downtown, but then we drove to the other end and accidentally drove onto the interstate heading towards Osaki.
Friday:
In the morning we got up and hit downtown. One of the things we found out about Alexandria is that they are king of the small-town antique business, and that every SINGLE store contains a basement which is also used to for selling their stuff. Yes, you can call me gay if you want, but I love antiques. I'm not one of those people that actually knows anything about them or goes to auctions, I just like old musty stuff worn/used by people who are more than likely long dead. Incidentally, I found an old Russian officer's hat (which I did not buy but should have). It was cool. I did buy an old movie camera that actually had unused film in it, and had the address of its previous owner (a military man) written on the back. Karissa also persuaded me to buy an old hat that was well-preserved (from the '60's).
We also found a hole-in-the-ground comics shop and a thrift store that outclassed any I've seen thus far in appearance, where Karissa bought an old suitcase.
Afterward, we got back onto the interstate (same one we accidentally drove onto, this time on purpose as it was actually the route leading to Minneapolis). We had a good trip, listened to some Rob Zombie along the way, as well as Karissa's goddamned Big & Rich. It took us a couple tries to find the Travelodge in Bloomington--it was cleverly hidden further than the exit Google gave us. I was overall disappointed with the room. One bed cost over $90 a night! Our motel charges just a little over half that for two beds. Luckily I got the employee discount, which brought it from
ridiculous down to
a little absurd.
We got settled in quickly, then planned our route into St. Paul. We got to the Science Museum early, so we had to check out some of the exhibits before doing the Bodyworlds thing. Parking was interesting, because we couldn't go in the normal way, and we had no idea where to get to spot the signs were telling us to go to. So we parked in the Target Event Center parking and pretended we were going to whatever event was going on there.
I think I should probably warn people that I've talked about this so much, that I think I may have built it up for people. April was a little disappointed when they went, and Karissa also thought it was supposed to be a little better than it turned out. I thought it was great. I got exactly what I expected (except there were no religious extremists protesting or criticizing it, I thought that would have been interesting to see). I even got the book. The rest of the museum was unfortunately not as great. I personally wanted to see more exhibits on early cultures and evolution, and most of what I saw was paleontology, meteorology, and some exhibits that were more for kids.
After the museum, I thought I'd drive around downtown St. Paul a little, see what it was like. It was fun, but then we got back on the road to take us into Minneapolis, and got ourselves severely lost. We tried to get our bearings, but it got so confusing that we finally had to stop at a gas station and buy a Minneapolis area map from an extremely rude bitch who obviously wanted us gone. A few more confusing turns and we found ourselves driving by SexWorld. I thought about stopping, but thought there might be a cover charge and didn't want to pay it. Turns out, I read later it's just a gigantic porn store, we probably could have gotten in free as a couple, but oh well.
We did get back that night. It took us an hour and a half, but we did it. After all that, Karissa still had to drag me to Wal Mart because she got bored.
Saturday:
I regained my courage from the previous night. Saturday morning was more of us getting lost, then finding St. Mary's Basilica and getting to see it about an hour before mass. We also thought a wedding was going to take place, judging by some of the dressed up people we saw. Back in our illegally parked car, we found the Nicollet Mall, which is apparently a fancier mall than I've seen. It was three or four floors, contained stores like Sack's 5th Avenue, some other high brow stores, and a nice little food court. We walked around downtown a little, found the metrodome, then headed back to the motel.
A little later, we went to the Russian Museum of Art, which was awesome, and we found out we apparently like Socialist Realism because we liked a lot of the paintings we saw. There was an overpriced gift shop where we picked up a couple matrioshkas. After that, we hit Toys R' Us, Babies R' Us and Borders, where I went a little overboard and bought, among other things, a book on Zombie philosophy and the physics of superheroes. Afterward, we drove around some more, and got lost in the Latino part of town. We parked across the street from a bazaar, and as I was putting quarters into the meter, this guy wanders up and mutters something I could barely understand, and it took him a couple more times for me to get "you don't have to put money in on Saturdays".
We wandered around the bazaar a little, but everyone was speaking spanish and some eastern language, and everything was ridiculously overpriced, though we wouldn't have known at first, since nothing had price tags. Karissa teased me about being the only white guy we saw in that part of town (she's white, but she passes for mexican and apparently native american as well). We got out okay, and found a Don Pablo's (they owned Paulo's when it was in East Grand Forks) which had extremely efficient service for a packed place.
Sunday:
Packed our bags, got the hell out of the motel and hit the mall of america. It was fun, as usual, except that I couldn't find the donut stand. We did find a little Halloween cafe, I bought a short sword half price and a Batman figure for my collection, and by the time we got back to the first floor, Karissa was too tired for the Aquatic thing, and we kind of just wanted to go home.
The ride was not all that bad, actually. A four hour ride is always a
little grueling, but I stayed awake the whole time, and we got to Mayville by about 8:30ish. We stayed that night in Mayville with a sick Isabella (head cold), then took off for home this morning. I slept like shit the whole weekend, including Mayville. Usually motel beds and me get along perfect, but this weekend was slightly different.
But here we are, 3 1/2 days and about 600 miles later, Karissa's in bed, and I'm just about to grab a quick shower before work. The whole trip, we only took about 3-4 picture of the motel inAlexandria, because it was cheaply teddy-bear themed. So that's that. Karissa can let me know if I left anything out.
