Day 2: Sculpture garden and downtown

After meeting Betsy on Saturday morning, we went back to the hotel for nap time. Allie seemed extraordinarily tired and cranky. So we were sure she'd sleep. She didn't.

So we played in the room for a bit and then headed for an afternoon outdoors. It was so beautiful and it had become obvious that outside was the best place for Allie. I remember reading about the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden before we went two years ago, but we didn't get there that time. When I ran across it while searching for activities this time, it went on the list of things to do!

It was kind of funny though... the address was on Hennepin Avenue across from the art museum in Minneapolis. I put the address in our GPS and I got three choices: Hennepin Avenue north, Hennepin Avenue south and Hennepin Avenue. The address didn't indicate a direction, so I chose Hennepin Avenue. We got to our destination and there was no art museum and definitely no sculpture garden! This isn't the first time our Garmin GPS has failed us.

Instead of getting mad, we were laughing as we drove around the neighborhood trying to figure out where to go. Thats when I discovered the navigation feature on my smart phone. I put our destination in there and it was only nine minutes away. I'm not sure where we actually went the first time, but we were happy when we got there!

This is such a beautiful area. There's a conservatory next to the garden that was closed for a wedding. We saw at least three different wedding groups (aside from the actual wedding that was there) come to the garden and take pictures. We took plenty of pictures ourselves!

Allie definitely enjoyed running around. She didn't care too much for the sculptures, but she did enjoy looking at the flowers.

I had to explain to Allie that we just look at the flowers and smell them, but we don't pick them. I had to tell her several times, but she didn't pick any flowers!

We got a nice family picture with the iconic spoon and cherry sculpture in the background. We spent close to two hours there just walking and running around the sculptures. It was definitely a good place to let Allie run, she had a blast. After we saw everything, we decided to go downtown to the stone arch bridge.

Allie really liked the bridge and watching the waterfall. She was a little too eager to climb up next to the railing though, and that made Mama nervous. Allie was getting pretty tired anyway, so we decided it was time to go back in the stroller.

We had a nice walk across the bridge. Of all the stuff we did this weekend, this is the only thing we did both times we went to Minneapolis.

When we were walking back to the car, we discovered Mill Ruins Park. This former industrial powerhouse was the leading international producer of flour back in its heyday.

We were getting tired, but it was worth it to walk down the hill and see the restored ruins.

The Mill City Museum pictured here is supposed to be really interesting to visit to learn more about the history of this area. We'll go there in a few years when Allie has a bit more of an attention span!

After this we were all beat. We decided to pick up a pizza and head to our room instead of going to a restaurant for dinner. It was a good choice. It was good pizza from a random place we found when we searched the area of our hotel!

Even though Allie was exhausted from not napping two days, she always perked up when we got back to the hotel. I think she was most in her element when it was just us. We still had plenty of fun when we went out though. Allie went to sleep earlier Saturday night than she did on Friday, so that made us happy. Mama and Dada weren't too far behind on going to sleep either!