Mall of America

Saturday, Aug 7

If you heard about a tornado in Minnesota, I just want you to know it wasn't near us.

I know it is probably weird to have a shopping mall as a destination but here is the reason. When the mall was built they built a small amusement park in the center. The park was designed and built by Knott's Berry Farm in Calif. I was working for them at the time so saw updates on the park from beginning to end. It was fun and interesting so I thought that since I was going to be in the area I might as well go see it in person. Many things have changed since then, I no longer work for Knott's and the amusement park in CA was sold. Now the park in the Mall is operated (I don't know if they own it or not) by Nickelodeon. All the Snoopy stuff is gone and Dora the Explorer and other characters have taken their places. We were surprised by the noise level, it wasn't as loud as we thought it would be. There were tons of kids and parents there. You can buy a daily wristband for $29.95 and ride the rides all day. We passed on that.

The Mall is four stores high, the only thing on level four is the movie theatre. The other three floors are full of stores and restaurants. We walked through a lot of it. They had Bloomingdale's, Nordstroms, Coach, Burberry, Gap, and a whole bunch of up-scales stores.

We decided to have linner and wound up at a place called Kokomo's Island Cafe. It was OK, nothing great. I assume it is a chain. We thought it would be like a restaurant in CA called Islands but it wasn't as good. I had a Calif hamburger, I am not sure what made it Calif but it was a basic hamburger. It was served with kettle chips. Bill had fish and chips but he substituted the fries for sweet potato fries. It was just OK. The service was a little on the slow side.

Anyway, we spent a good chunk of the day wandering around and not buying anything. It started raining during the night so we closed the windows and turned the air on. Here are the pictures I took in the mall.