Minneapolis Magic

Started out a rainy sloppy day.  Hopes of city riding were suspended and replaced by a few hours in a coffee shop.  Things cleared up so we hopped on bikes and headed out, super excited about a little city time in the sunshine.  Rode the Midtown Greenway to the Hiawatha Trail down to the river and into downtown.

Minneapolis has done a really great job of planning their bike facilities.  In addition to the amazing trails, it seemed like every street had a bike facility of some kind.  In fact, Minneapolis overtook Portland as Bicycling Magazine's #1 Bike City in America for their most recent ranking.  We checked out some of the things that make Minneapolis great for biking - the NiceRide bike share stations (similar to Denver's Bike Sharing system) and the 1st Ave cycle track.

We rode across the bridge into northeast Minneapolis and immediately came to a place we couldn't ride by without checking out. Nye's is an old Polish bar that has been serving the northeast neighborhood since 1950.  We stopped in for a drink and had a great time hearing stories from the bartender (he has been there for 30 years) and enjoying the sampler plate with delicious polish beers.

Eric's friend Annie and her friend Stacy met us there after an art crawl at the old casket factory.  We walked from there to Stacy's school to see a sculpture she had recently sold - great to get some exposure to the burgeoning Twin Cities art scene - then made our way back to Annie's place in Uptown and made a plan for the evening.  We settled on pizza and bluegrass followed by bowling and beers.  The bowling alley was great - a little 8 laner, no automatic scoring.  While Eric won for bowling style points, I took home the winning score.  We wrapped up the night with drinks and Chino Latino and sauntered home in the rain.

Morning came fast and we headed out for Basilica of St. Mary - the first Basilica in America.  An amazing building and my first mass.  We wrapped up our stay with brunch at French Meadow - organic, local, delightful.  Just down the road we stopped at the Wedge Co-op.  Cool little spot with all of the produce clearly labeled with where it came from and plaques with summaries about each of the co-op's contributing growers.  Seems like there is great support for this type of farm and city integration in the area.

Minneapolis was a great stop - click here to check out some more pics.