Our Impromptu Tour of the Twin Cities

My Mom and I took the three kids to the Target Center and IKEA last Friday. I needed to exchange some vouchers I’d received for free tickets to a kids’ show coming up, hence the trip to the Target Center.

We decided to go to the Target Center first to get that out of the way before we went to IKEA. The trip there was relatively uneventful. I had bought a bag of pseudo popcorn for the kids to eat on the way up so they were happily munching on that and listening to their CD players.

One, two, three, we’re in the parking ramp. Four, five, six, we’ve found a parking spot.

We notice a large construction project outside of the ramp that looks like a big amphitheater or arena or something and realize it’s the new Twins stadium. K announces he has to pee. We have no idea where a bathroom is.

So we start walking toward the skyways and follow the signs to the Target Center box office. K reminds us that he has to pee every 3 minutes or more often. I’ve kind of blocked out that part. There are no bathrooms along the way from the ramp to the box office. I think I see a sign for a bathroom but apparently it is just there to tease mothers with sons who have peanut-sized bladders.

Since we are at the box office, I get the tickets and am amazed at how courteous service people are in the Cities. Not at all the generally gruff, grouchy people I routinely deal with in Rochester.

K still has to pee.

We head back up the skyway and take a left where we would have taken a right to go back to the car. M points this out, to which I remind her that her brother has to pee.

Pee pit stop accomplished; we head back to the car. I attempt to take a photo of the stadium through the glass in the skyway instead of through the bars in the ramp but my camera doesn’t have any more space for photos and I discover I don’t know how to delete photos. Fun! I love it when I learn something new that I don’t know.

So we get everyone loaded back in the car, pay, and turn out of the ramp. There is construction right outside the ramp, which throws me for a loop, and I ask my mom for her opinion on where we should go to get back to IKEA. She suggests that I get on I94, which, in retrospect, was not the best idea.

However I didn’t know where to go and my mom thought that I94 would hook up with 494, which is what we really wanted to be on. (For the record, it doesn’t.) We drive for a while and soon realize we are in St. Paul (nowhere near where we wanted to be). We continue driving, turning randomly and finding ourselves driving by the University of Minnesota Campus, the State Fairgrounds, miscellaneous other landmarks. My mom is enjoying looking at the old houses. M is in the back seat crying because we’re lost and that’s what she does when her mother gets lost in the Cities. K is talking nonstop about who knows what and it is like a little loud mosquito buzzing in my ear as I’m trying to figure out a way back to the damned Big Blue Store.

I tell my mom to get the map out of the glove box and she does. When I comment about a street we’re passing she starts to fold the map back up. Uh. Why are you putting the map away?

Oh I thought you knew where we were.

No, just telling you what streets we were passing so you could look on the map.

Doh! So she gets the map back out and after several discussions we finally find 35W, which connects to 494, and we arrive at IKEA. M stops crying as soon as she sees the airport, which is right near IKEA, and instead starts extolling the wonderful navigation skills of her grandmother (who, I will remind you, got us lost to begin with).

Good times.

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Aweigh post below.