Last Wednesday we flew from Paris to Minneapolis via Amsterdam. It was a during-the-day flight traveling West so I (attempted to) stay awake for (most of) the whole flight. Neither of us really had too much trouble with jet lag this whole trip! A blessing.
I frankly didn't have high hopes for Minneapolis—we were headed there for an event Amy was invited to attend, it was convenient to attach it to the end of this Europe trip, and we figured we'd make the most of it. But it was kinda great!
A strong introduction: the Minneapolis/St. Paul transit system is terrific. We got on a train from the terminal that took us to right outside our hotel in downtown Minneapolis. It was clean and fast and well-lit and well-used! We never ended up on a bus but used the train for like half a dozen trips in the three days we were there.
Some highlights included excellent food at Diane's Place and Billy Sushi; an excellent curation and presentation of art at the The Walker Art Center (sans an exhibit that made use of AI for some fucking reason but at least they admitted it); a quick stroll past the remains of the Third Precinct station en route to Moon Palace Books; and live jazz at Berlin. We had fully set Minneapolis up for failure by setting it next to Paris, but it held its own. Good job!
Also of course there was the Mall of America. I spent a whole day there while Amy had other stuff to do and I loved it. Taking a nice train to a huge mall? What could be better? To be honest I thought it would be bigger but I still think they did a good job. Good job, Mall of America.
The second half of the week we were back at home and I did not work on Halloween at all, which felt extremely bad, but I have been catching up on other things I shirked during our excursion. Also, I had to practice some music to participate in Freak March, a giant puppet parade hosted by Freak Nature Puppets on the USC campus.
I played trumpet in a little marching band! We were not good but we all had a lot of fun. I was one of I think four winds (including two clarinets and a flute), and all of us had the same experience where this was basically the first time we were playing our instruments in twenty years. I am so eager to get back in to music after Halloween!
But now we're back to life, back to reality, and I need to finish that animatronic parrot I started building two weeks ago. Do you remember that? I barely do!