We returned to Minnesota today to see the capitol, a waterfall, and the Mall of America. In this part of the state, we saw more cropland. We also saw the Mississippi River. We had driven north of the Mississippi on our way west. We got to see how the underpasses and bridges in St. Paul are often treated as art work.
The Minnesota Capitol has been recently restored. It is in pristine condition.
Here are some close ups of the outside of the building. The detail in the marble is amazing. During our tour, we were allowed to go to the top of the building to see the view and to get a close up of the gold work on the statue.
As part of the restoration, the dome was refurbished. They also polished the state seal to give it a new look. The most amazing transformation was the basement. They converted a cellar into useable space like the Governor’s Dining Room. They used recessed painting and backlighting to add depth and an outdoor feel to the rooms. The conversion of the hallways was a work of art as well.
The stairways and hallways in the main part of the capitol had marble and stone and a wide variety of art work.
We timed our arrival at the Senate Chamber perfectly. Someone was walking out of the room so we asked if we could go in for a picture. We got permission. He even took our picture. We also got a photo of the ceiling dome in the room.
We could only see the House Chamber from the gallery. The House Chamber seemed to be even more decorated than the Senate Chamber. It did only have a skylight instead of a dome.
The Supreme Court had the most ornate decorations of any room in the capitol. The guide was humorous in her description of the words on the ceiling. She said people usually use fancy Latin words to sound important. She then said lex in Latin just means law.
We enjoyed a walk in the park in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We went to the park to see Minnehaha Falls. The falls and the creek area are quite a wild area in the middle of the city. We saw an occasional fence and lots of people. It was still very quiet for being in a major city. One reminder of city life we would like to forget was the 125 step staircase to get to the bottom of the falls.
The Mall of America is HUGE! The shopping area is three stories tall. It includes an amusement park that is bigger than many other shopping malls. The entrance we used had a butterfly based mobile that was over two stories tall. The large butterfly had a wingspan of at least 30 feet. It took us almost fifteen minutes to walk from the entrance we used to the opposite side of the mall.
We walked through the Lego Store. They had a two story wall of Lego dispensers that had over 300 different round bins. It was not clear how you could get blocks from the bins in the upper rows of the wall. They had much larger than life sized Lego models. Many were eight to ten feet tall. The largest one might have been life sized. It was a 25 to 30 foot tall transformer model. The “person” in the control unit appeared to be over six feet tall. The whole mall exudes the statement Go Big or Go Home.
