Summer in MPLS

Capella Tower
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Working in downtown Minneapolis from Jun until Sep 2009.  Days are warm and sunny or partly cloudy.  Mpls is a big city experience with busy streets, tall buildings, traffic and lots of people, shops and restaurants everywhere.  I live around Nicollet Mall in the heart of downtown, usually in the city center Marriott.  Mpls also has the prettiest skyscrapers I have ever seen - I often walk looking up at the tops of all the buildings, lucky I haven't fallen into a ditch yet!  Spoiler - major construction on Marquette Ave makes it dusty around those parts.  Still, the city always feel vibrant and alive.

Loring Park
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I go on long walks to Loring Park, a green oasis amidst the concrete with red-winged blackbirds, roses and black squirrels.  I also walk northward across the Mississippi river and south into Eat Street, which is supposed to be a gourmand haven, but looks rather sleazy to me.

Beeauuutiful buildings.....

Some evenings, I walk on the Hennepin Ave Bridge and go northward over the Mississippi river.  At first, I wasn't so sure it was the Mississippi river, because I had seen the Mississippi river in New Orleans in 1997 and even gone on a river cruise on it.  How could it be the same river so far up north?  But it is the same river, very long, runs from north to south and goes through some 10 US states.  I go up on the Hennepin bridge and return on the 3rd Ave bridge.  Some day, I am going to get a nice picture of the Falls of Saint Anthony from the Stone Arch bridge.

AT&T Tower
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Saw Ella at the Guthrie Theater in Aug.  The audience was almost entirely comprised of seniors - the sweet grey haired lady next to me said that "the theater kept her out of mischief !".  Tina Fabrique as Ella Fitzgerald has a commanding stage presence and an amazing voice to match !!  The acoustics at the Guthrie are fantastic and the band accompanying her was excellent as well, with the trumpet player doing a dead-on impersonation of Louis Armstrong.  The audience tried to get the band to keep jamming, but they didn't seem too interested and quit after a few minutes.  Oh well, it was a great night out all the same.

Skyline from Franklin Ave
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The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is across from the Walker Art Center.  The garden has a flower garden at one end - when I went in early Aug, mostly white and purple broing flowers and lots of bees.  I found Loring Park's small circular diverse flower garden with dedications much more interesting.  Children will love the eye-catching Spoonbridge sculpture - the spoon and cherry.  The outdoor galleries had some sculptures that I wanted to see more closely, but some idiot was swinging and jumping from one of the sculptures and a few couples were in there, trying to find privacy.  Get a room, for pete's sake !!