The plans were to go to the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul, MN, to see the King Tut exhibit. They also have a "domed" IMAX on Mummies. Then we would head over to the Mall of America to do the new SeaLife Aquarium (opened in March, 2011) and the Nickelodean Universe amusement park.
First we had to pick up some food for lunch and dinner. So we headed over to Byerly's, which is an upscale supermarket, probably something like Wegman's back home, to which I've never been, so not quite sure. But it has a Kosher Experience-like department to get prepared foods. They also have a kosher bakery department. So we picked up a bunch of Spaghetti and Meatballs dinners (and KremBo for dessert!) and some panini bread for lunch, and some fruits and veggies.
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| They wanted to get the "chocolate" bananas! |
We went back to the hotel to put the food on ice, and to make lunches. We
headed out around 11:30AM and got to the museum at 12:00PM. It's right across
the street from the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild and
Timberwolves. The area is called River Center. It's right on the bank of the
Mississippi River.
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| Along the Mississippi |
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| I think the "pressure" was getting to Karen |
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| St. Paul skyline |
We got tickets to the Mummies movie for 1:00PM and the King Tut exhibit for
2:00PM. The movie was about 45 minutes long. So that would give us a little
time to squeeze in lunch between the two.
We went into the regular exhibits for the time we had before the movie. They
had some nice exhibits, for all ages. Time quickly passed and we proceeded to
the theater for the IMAX movie. It was pretty neat, focusing on a professor's
quest to figure out how the ancient Egyptians performed embalming and being able
to extract DNA to help cure current diseases.
After the movie we quickly ran to get our lunch from the locker. We tried
sitting out on the promenade along the river, but it was a bit sunny and windy.
So we moved to right inside the doors to the promenade where it was not sunny,
but still pretty windy. You see, whenever the doors were opened, a big gust would
come in and actually blow our napkins and cups off our table!
We finished eating right at 2:00PM and headed for the King Tut exhibit. They
had tons of statues and relics that were excavated from various sites in Egypt,
mainly along the Nile. It all led up to the process of how they found King
Tut's tomb, and the other rooms in the burial place where they found hundreds of
ancient relics. But they didn't have the real mummy here. That's still in
Egypt and only investigated a few times since it was found - for scientific
testing, and moving it to an enclosed case for preservation. The mummy here was
a replica of the real one.
We spent another hour or so going around the regular exhibits.
We then headed to the Mall of America. We went straight to the aquarium, which
just opened a few months ago. The mall itself is an amazing sight to see.
There are four floors of stores/attractions. There are many anchor stores and
virtually every store you've ever seen has a spot here. There is also a
theater, a bowling alley, a casino/hotel (!), an aquarium, an amusement park,
mini-golf, and the list goes on and on.
The aquarium was pretty cool. Not so huge (after all, it IS in a mall!), but
very impressive. Most of it is walking thru a tube through the aquarium with
sharks, rays, turtles, and lots of other fish swimming all around you. They
also have lots of smaller tanks with other fishes. They also offer a "behind
the scenes" tour (for extra $$), but we didn't really have time (or budget) to
do that. But we heard from other people that it was well worth it.
We took the kids to the amusement park next. After 5:00PM they have an "all you
can ride until closing" ticket for $20. We got there at 5:30 and left at
8:00PM. It's amazing to think that all these rides are inside a mall. And
these are no little kiddie rides. They rival normal amusement park rides.
There is even a log flume ride there!!
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| Josh and Arie in the lowest seats |
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| Adina, Arie, and Josh did this one! |
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| Adina, Arie (backwards), and Naama (waving) |
While the kids were at the park, Karen and I went to the Mirror Maze. (Doesn't
EVERY mall have a mirror maze?!?!). It's not so big, but it could take you 15-
20 minutes to make your way in and out.
There is also a huge Lego store at the mall, with huge Lego creations.
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| A mural made out of single lego pieces |
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Byerly's again to pick up some stuff
for the trek over to Rapid City, SD (Mount Rushmore). We got back to the hotel,
heated up our meatballs and spaghetti and went down to the patio to dine.
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| Dining along I-394 |
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| Our hotel, and my home-away-from-home office across the street |
It will be an early rising day for us tomorrow for the 7.5 hour drive to Wall,
SD (home of Wall Drugs - you might have seen a bumper sticker from there. I
never knew what it was until I was told about this place.) It's about another
hour from there to Rapid City.
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