A free day!

I love vacations – but I hate the part where you worry if your plans are straight in your head. When I booked the Amtrak from Minneapolis – I remember thinking (now I remember!) that we would be getting on right before bedtime. Somewhere along the way I forgot that little fact and started thinking we were getting on at 11:15AM not PM. Luckily we stayed at a great hotel in Minneapolis with a great staff. I had booked a shuttle to Amtrak at 10AM in the morning. They call our room at 7AM (and I am thinking – who calls this early?) and Don asks me if I am sure I want to go at 10AM. The only two trains he sees that day are at 7AM and 11:15PM. I pull the tickets and yep – we are at 11:15PM. So we have an extra day to explore Minneapolis. Luckily for us since I didn’t do any shopping at the Mall of America and we had been pretty rushed.

So we have a leisurely morning at the hotel and I repack all the bags. Then we head to the MOA for lunch. We then shop a bit and decide to see a Movie. Ice Age 3 – it is OK, but not as good as the others. We did get to see a cool preview of Harry Potter that opens next week – sitting in these cool chairs that move you with the movie. Too bad our theater doesn’t have that.

We shopped a bit more and found a putt-putt golf course on one of the upper levels. I didn’t want to play at first – but decided to since Bryce really wanted to. We had a blast – and I even won a free game for getting a hole-in-one on the 18th. I actually got 3 hole in one’s, I am thinking of going Pro!

After a light dinner – we headed back to our hotel for an evening of swimming. Even though we were technically checked out, they let us store our luggage there, use the pool and computer, and even shuttled us back and forth to the MOA and then to Amtrak at 10PM! If you are ever in Minneapolis – stay at the Fairfield Inn – They are great.

View Full Album

So we finally get on Amtrak – and we have to explore. Then we are too excited to sleep so we hang out on my lower bunk watching the world go by and happy to be starting part two of our vacation.