So that’s the first week in the Twin Cities. We’re loving it so far although we’re about ready to get our stuff back; fortunately it shows up Tuesday. I dropped an AirTag in one of the moving boxes to figure out if it’d be an effective tracker and it sure was; I can see our things in a warehouse to the northwest after a somewhat alarming trip down to Chicago.
We have seen movies in four movie theaters: the local Alamo Drafthouse, the MSP Film Society’s Main Cinema, a local AMC multiplex, and finally Trylon Cinema. They all have their pros and cons. Everything but the Drafthouse is doable by public transit and everything but the Main doesn’t require transfers. The Trylon is clearly gonna be the theater of my heart: remarkably good programming, comfy little theater, and a nice coffee shop next door (where I am right now). The Alamo… well, I knew they weren’t gonna be what I remember from our time in Austin, and they weren’t. So it goes.
Our neighborhood is excellent. We have a nice coffee shop with good coffee on our block, there’s a nice co-op across the street — which we have joined — and there’s an Aldi a long walk away. There’s a ton of construction going on right now to take our four lane cross street down to three lanes, which is well worth a little disruption.
Besides, who needs cars? We’re right on the B line rapid transit bus between St. Paul and Minneapolis: that puts us in downtown St. Paul next to the farmer’s market and minor league baseball stadium in 15 minutes, or in Minneapolis in half an hour or so. It doesn’t go all the way to downtown but it does intersect with one of the light rail stops, which would also be a good way to go to the Mall of America on the infrequent occasions we want to do that. We didn’t plan out the convenient public transit but it’s thrilling.
And we have done both a minor league baseball game and the farmer’s market already. Good market, with a decent range of vegetables and meats. I should probably stop expecting random tamales from a stand to be good, though, no offense to anyone but we’re not on the West Coast any more and I imagine I should be a bit more selective.
Speaking of which, the food seems decent. Being on GLP-1s makes it a little harder to feel certain but we did find one breakfast place we like a lot — Colossal Cafe does a great breakfast bowl and S. says the pancake breakfast sandwiches are excellent. I’ll post again on this topic when we’ve tried more local Ethiopian, Somalian, and Hmong cuisine.
Finally, it’s just pretty around here. There’s nothing like Washington’s mountains, nor did we expect that. The lakes, though, are wonderful; this morning before our Trylon movie we took the B line down to Bde Maka Ska and walked around a bit and the way the city has preserved green space is lovely. We’re gonna spend way more time on the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.