Hello all! How are you? お元気ですか。
I’ve been long promised to write all of my experiences in America, so I will start with this post, describing about my elder sister’s city, Minneapolis. Anyway, right now i’m already on my way to another trip to Sydney, Australia. So i’d better finish posts about America sooner 😀
So, Minneapolis, where my sister live, is a city located in Minnesota (and it’s also claimed to be the largest). With population of 400.000 this city seems so far away from a busy and bustling city life. This city is incredibly peaceful and quiet, not so many people are wandering around the street nor cars. And also incredibly cold, in winter they sometimes get a deep-freeze and the temperature can reach -40 degree celcius (could you imagine that?!) Also the snow might be piling up until one meters. Frozen~
So let me tell you about some places that i’ve visited in this city :
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
MCAD!
This is the college where my sister took her master degree. It is a quite posh art college (thanks to Fulbright) and it was really nice. The main building is located adjacent to dormitories and also art museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art (so you practically live inside the campus!) But, for students finishing their thesis, they have a studio off-campus.
the whole family in front of MCAD!
It has a huge lawn and i suppose they use it for picnic in a warm summer day. However, in the (quite) chilly weather of May the Minnesotan already walk around the lawn with only shorts and tank tops (look how they’ve adapted with chilly weather). On the graduation day, everyone take photos on the huge lawn.
everyone taking happy photos on the lawn 😀
Around the campus there is street fully packed with nice restaurant and bars. I really love the Vietnamese restaurant! ❤
i’ve fallen into this lovely noodle soup :9
The Minneapolis Institute of Art
Minneapolis Institute of Arts!
This is the museum located next to the campus, it has a huge collections from modern visual arts to world ancient art. From textile, paintings, sculpture, they have it all! It’s free of charge except for special exhibition held occasionally.It’s also adjacent to the Children’s theater. Take a look of some of its dazzling collections!
for more information you can go here
The Westin Minneapolis
We stayed at The Westin Minneapolis, located in the downtown Minneapolis. The hotel has been awarded Four Diamond Award from 2009 to 2014. The building is unique because it used to be a farmer and mechanic saving banks, they still have the safe (now it’s used as a wine lounge, super cool).
Farmers and Mechanic Saving Bank remains 😀
Westin Minneapolis 😀
Lobby Area
4 diamonds award for 6 consecutive years!
Safe-Wine Lounge Area
Minneapolis Downtown & Nicollet Mall
It only took about 5-10 minutes walking from our hotel to Minneapolis Downtown and its famous shopping street, Nicollet Mall. This mall is actually a street portion of Nicollet Avenue containing shopping centers and packed with many notable stores (Target headquarters is also located in this street) and public facilities such as orchestra hall.
One of the distinctive features of this street is their skyway, interconnecting buildings (because in winter it will be too cold to walk outside) and sometimes in winter they have parade in this street.
However, we went there in the evening (around 7 PM) and the stores were closed at 7 PM (it was funny, there was still daylight but all of the stores were closing and it was so quiet). But we had managed to take some pictures, thou.
Mommy and Daddy 🙂
Look at the skyway!
Welcome to Nicollet Street!
Hell’s Kitchen and Angel Food Bakery
Not far from the Nicollet Mall there are several incredible places to eat! Hell’s Kitchen and also Angel Food Bakery, it is located at the same building, both at 80 South 9th Street.
So hell’s kitchen concept is to bring breakfast menu to every meal time of the day! So they served so many breakfast menu inside their menu and even they sell their legendary peanut butter. Their decoration is a bit hellish, red and black paints, a loads of scary paintings related to demons and evils, however the atmosphere is just like, Hard Rock Cafe i think 😀
HK interior!
our hobby, hunting for a good food all around the world 😀
My commentary about the food? Just like it’s slogan, it is really a damn good food! We ordered Pecan Caramel Rolls, Steak and Egg, Hell’s Kitchen Juicy Lucifer (my favorite), and Lemon Ricotta Hotcake for our dinner 😀 you can see my review here :
Lemon Ricotta Hotcake
Pecan Caramel Rolls
Steak & Egg
Hell’s Kitchen Juicy Lucifer
The restaurant open from 6.30 AM and closed at 11 PM. If you’re coming in breakfast or dinner time, you have to watch out for the long queue. Many people really want to eat breakfast here! Please refer here for more information.
Located just upstairs is Angel Food Bakery. The Angel food bakery is really really cute, all the decorations are just like what i want when i have a cupcake store later on. The pastry was good but not the cupcake (still i think it’s too greasy, the icing is too artificial, blah blah~) Please take a look here for their website.
Just Cute!!
Lovely..
Cupcupmeal Founder VS Angel Food Bakery
Unfortunately the cupcake did not taste as good as i expected..
Foshay Tower & Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
I did not visit those two places but my auntie did with her college friend. Foshay tower used to be a legendary skyscraper in Minneapolis as one of the first building to surpass the height of Minneapolis City Hall. Now this building is a luxury collection hotel, W Minneapolis, when they also have the famous and posh steak house, Manny’s Steak House. You can visit the museum and go to the observation deck to watch beautiful scenery of Minneapolis.
Foshay Tower Observatory Deck.
Foshay Tower, a Washington Memorial.
While Minneapolis Sculpture Garden features sculpture works from famous artist and it’s most famous for its legendary huge cherry and spoonbridge monument.
Oldenburg Monument 🙂
Mall of America
I save the last thing for this huge shopping mall, gigantically huge and famous shopping mall, Mall of America. This mall is located near the airport so we can take light rail (blue line) from the city center.
Inside the mall there is huge selections of branded store ( i got crazy because of the gigantic F21 store, as always) and even Nickelodeon Land! I recommend to eat in Ruby Tuesday if you visit Mall of America.
Mall of America with my whole family and my auntie’s friends.
for further information you can go here.
So, pardon me for this extra long pages! I spent almost 2 hours to finish this post inside Starbucks while waiting for my flight to Sydney!
See you soon for other American-related post or even winter in Sydney!
Tons of love
Afifa Ayu Koesoema
