Shop 'til you Puke

While I came to Minnesota to meet family, it was also time to have some touristy fun. Really, you can't be any more touristy while in the Twin Cities than visiting the Mall of America. I, like many people back home, generally hate malls. The MOA (to use local vernacular) is really just a big, industrial mall. All of your mall staples are represented (some more than once. More on that later), there just happens to be this big amusement park in the middle that greets you as you walk in.



But back to the stores for a moment...If anyone ever wonders if there is such a thing a TOO big of a mall, the answer is most certainly, yes. When your mall is so big that you have to put the same store not once, note twice, but three times in different areas, you have too much room. I'm not talking about Starbucks either (I actually only saw one of those), there are 4 Lids stores in the mall. Why do you need the same hat store 4 times??? Then there are MOA gift stores all over the place too, also cheating. Throw in a few Cinnabons, I figure there are probably only about 12 stores in the whole place...give or take 50 or so.

We didn't really have time to do a lot of shopping. We hit a lot of sporting goods stores so that my brother-in-laws can stock up on Twins and Gopher merchandises. I got a few Gophers stuff too but will probably wait until I get to the Twins game to get me a hat or something. Plus riding the rides take up most of your time. The girls had a blast and wanted to go on everything. Now that Hannah is tall enough for more adult rides she went on her first roller coaster. Britt and I were nervous but it turned out that the roller coaster there was probably perfect for a first timer. Just intense enough for a good time. Sara played the younger sibling perfectly and cried a lot because she wasn't tall enough for many of the rides. The ones she did get on, she had a blast....



One last cool thing...the mall was built on the site of the old Metropolitan stadium where the Twins used to play before the beloved Metrodome was erected (heh heh, he said erect...). They left two pieces of the old stadium as part of the mall, including home plate....for Twins diehards like my in-laws, this was like a pilgrimage to Mecca. For Britt and I, we just get a chance for more goofy pictures.....



Cities visited: Mall of America, MN (it's big enough to be its own city...ok, technically it's in Bloomington, MN)