National Lampoon's Minneapolis Vacation

You know the scene in "Vacation" when the Griswold's end up lost in the ghetto?

It happens. One minute, you're in downtown Minneapolis. Then you go around the building, and you know there could be serious trouble. And I'm not just talking about the guy walking down the street that looked like a zombie. I'm talking about groups of people standing around looking scary, and a paddy wagon stopped in front of one of those groups., which happened to be in front of the Salvation Army. Thankfully, it was still light out and we were able to get out fast. We were able to laugh at it.

We laughed a LOT this weekend. We went to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood and it was the FUNNIEST THING EVER. We laughed for 2.5 hours straight, including the intermission. It was worth the 4.5 hour drive...and we're very excited they're going to be in Milwaukee in January. We figure since it's an improv show, seeing them more than once wouldn't be redundant.

Other than that show, dinner at the Loon Cafe, and the hotel we stayed at, Minneapolis was a disaster. The hotel was good because they give turn-down service to "club level" members. We got the club room because it included free room-service breakfast and "high speed" internet. We didn't know about the turn-down serivce though, so when we got back from the show and our bed was made and there were new towels and stuff, it was a bit freaky. My husband went to get ice and when he got to the machine he realized there was ice in the bucket already. We didn't know where it came from.

Anyway, I can not tell you how many times we got lost or turned around in that damn city. On Saturday it was funny. Street names include S 1st St and S 1st Ave. That's not confusing enough. But it was all laughable.

Sunday is a different story. I shit you not, it took us 2 F(*(ING hours to get out of Minneapolis. (I apologize to anyone reading this that enjoys MNPLS...I do NOT. I should have gotten better directions, I suppose). There are a lot of one-way streets in downtown Minneapolis. And when we got lost Saturday, we were seeing a lot of signs for the interstate. We couldn't find them today. We had looked at the map online before we left the hotel, and it looked plain to us. Hwy 55 runs into the interstate. Yes, 94W. We want to go east. And when we FINALLY (after a lot of searching) found an entrance to I94 East, it was under construction. Closed. Ok, there's a detour sign. Never fun, but it's got to take us where we need to be. So we're following this highway, and there's a detour 94E sign pointing up and to the right. So we took the exit. Realizing right away that there must have been another exit right under the bridge that was actually the detour. Shit. We have to get across the highway we were just on, get turned around, and back where we came from. Easy, right? Not so much. I swear to God, the side road ended with no way to get across the highway. We had to take some random way back because part of the side road was one-way, and we finally found our way back onto the highway and to the correct detour. We still have not found 94E, still detouring.

OOH! What's that? A sign for 94E. GET ON! We do that, and are determined to make it out of town without getting off the highway. But we really need gas, and the only places we've seen gas stations were really shady areas. We're trying to find something a little less scary. We see a BP, but we've passed the exit because there wasn't a big blue sign that said "GAS" on it. So we get off at this exit that has "attractions" on the big blue sign. No gas stations. We actually go BACK two exits to the BP. There's a guy washing windshields, and that creeps me out. D can't get the pump to work, so we decide to head across the street to the other gas station. Still not a great area, but dammit, we're down to about 20 miles until we're out of gas, and we haven't even made it to St. Paul yet. We get our gas, get back on 94E and GO GO GO.

Needless to say, it was a LONG day. I cried a little bit, but there was no yelling. I was very glad to know that we could get through that without yelling. A lot of times it would be each person blaming the other, even though it is NO ONE'S fault. We don't do that, and I consider myself very lucky for that.

We finally made it home, and I can tell you I will not be going back to Minneapolis. I'm pretty sure my husband won't be either.

EVER.