One thing that has been pretty excellent about traveling around the country this year is the opportunities I’ve had to meet up with a bunch of people in person. That’s awesome because I love hanging out with cool people, and it’s extra awesome because I can lean on their local expertise to find amazing places to meet (and usually to eat).
During a number of these meet-ups I’ve been asked a question along the lines of “so do you have a favorite city so far, one you’d consider settling down in once you finish traveling?” While the answer to that is “it’s complicated”, there’s part of it that is actually pretty straightforward: I haven’t been able to give any city a fair evaluation because I have pretty intentionally aimed to be in each place at the time of year when it is at its best. New Orleans in February during Mardi Gras, Nashville in the early Spring of March, and Minneapolis during the beautiful Summer of May. I loved Minneapolis. I thought it was an excellent city.
In May.
I also suspect that there’s a six-month window that I would be a lot less enthusiastic about. The network of skyways linking most of the big buildings downtown really drove home just how inhospitable the Winters must get, and the things that I enjoyed about Minneapolis mostly involved being outside.
I think Minneapolis had the best bicycle infrastructure of anywhere I’d been this year. An abundance of large, well-marked bicycle lanes and paths made it easy to get around, and there was an abundance of nice green space. The areas along the river were especially lovely to spend time in.
There was also a lot of good food around both Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I ended up going back to quite a few restaurants more than once, but one of them was a massive stand-out. Gai Noi was where I choose to spend the evening of my birthday, and my only regret is that I waited until so late in my time in the city to go there. It was an incredible meal, and the ones I ate over the subsequent week before I left the city were all as good.
One of the appetizers on the menu was spicy tempura-fried green beans, and it was so good that I ordered it every time I went. They were fried just the right amount of time to be the perfect texture, with just a light coating of tempura batter for extra crunch, and then dusted with chili powder. A perfect combination of flavor and texture. The curry was also one of the best I’ve had in a long time.
I also feel that I should mention that, while I’m not really a “drink fancy things” person most of the time, I ordered a mocktail since my first time at Gai Noi was my birthday, along with dessert, and both were excellent. The mocktail was a combination of lemongrass, ginger, and black tea, and it was one of those drinks that makes you understand why people do drink fancy things. Truly delightful. The dessert was a black sesame mochi bar, another incredible combination of texture and flavor.
No trip to Minneapolis is complete without a trip to the Mall of America. It’s incredibly bizarre to think that any mall, even one as big as the Mall of America, is an international tourist attraction. People fly into the US just to shop there, which is bonkers.
Also, I lied, you can totally visit Minneapolis and skip the mall. I mean, it’s huge, and there is a certain novelty to a mall that contains an amusement park (including some small, but impressive for being indoors, rollercoasters. That is a sight to see. However, if you’ve been to a mall anywhere else, you’ve seen everything the Mall of America has to offer. In fact, other malls might even be more interesting?
One of the things that really stood out to me about the Mall of America was that, despite having over 500 stores, it was utterly dominated by familiar corporate brands. There were maybe half a dozen interesting local places, and then another half-dozen Minnesota stores that sold state-pride stuff. Other than that, though, it was American Eagle Outfitters after Kay Jewelers after Banana Republic. I walked the entire mall looking for interesting places, and didn’t find many.
I saw a number of cool things while I was in Minneapolis, but one stand-out spot that I wanted to shout out was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. (Conveniently located near Gai Noi, the aforementioned incredible Thai restaurant.)
Sculpture is one of those artforms that is very hit-or-miss for me. I’m really interested in methodology and interesting use of materials, which is something that sculpture can get really deep into. On the flip side, I’m a lot less interested in deeply metaphorical stuff, which sculpture can also get deep into. The Minneapolis Sculpture garden felt like a decent mix of both, with enough of the former that I enjoyed my walk-through even if it meant seeing the latter.
The sculpture garden itself is super cool. It’s basically a public park, open from most directions, that you can just walk into and chill in. Except that it’s full of sculptures. Large green spaces are things that I already like, so I was positively inclined, and then I did some wandering around and enjoyed it even more.
One of the most famous works in the garden is Spoonbridge and Cherry. It is a silly-sounding name for a sculpture that, when I looked at photos of it, I thought was, indeed, silly. I wasn’t particularly interested in it, but it’s big, and on the way to other things, so I figured I’d take a look.
Good thing I did. Because it turns out that the “spoonbridge” and the “cherry” parts of the sculpture are, indeed, sort of silly and not particularly exciting. Fortunately, Spoonbridge and Cherry isn’t really about the spoon or the cherry. It’s about water. In fact, it’s about water in three interesting, interconnected ways. First, it’s built out into a little pond, which provides an interesting reflection to enjoy. Second, it’s got a little water fountain at the base of the “stem” which lets water flow out over the surface of the “cherry”. The play of light through a thin film of water layered over the reflective surface of the sculpture is a meditative thing to sit and watch. Finally, the top of the “stem” is a sprayer that sends out a mist of water out over the pond. This serves to cause disruption to the pond’s surface, doing interesting things to the reflections in it, and when the light is right (as it was when I was there) it forms little mini rainbows.
So I take it back: Spoonbridge and Cherry is great. You should check it out on a warm, sunny day to best appreciate the rainbows.
I hadn’t ever heard of Jenny Holzer before, but apparently she was responsible for one the more striking (to me, at least) works in the garden. The Living Series is apparently a large body of text written by Holzer which has been displayed in all sorts of places in all sorts of media, but in the sculpture garden selections from The Living Series are carved into granite benches around the park. I’m a huge sucker for practical sculpture, so I already liked the bench concept. On top of that, I found a lot of the selections to be pretty thought-provoking. They weren’t exactly profound, but they were interesting, and more than that they were revelatory of the writer’s thought processes in a way that I find few pieces of writing manage to accomplish. Walking around the park and reading all 28 benches provided a neat composite view of a single person’s worldview, which I was surprised to find myself really appreciating.
Ultimately, Minneapolis was great. I’d love to go there again. Definitely in the Summer.
Leave a Reply