Nothing Rhymes With Minneapolis

*The better-looking photos in this post are taken by my kid.

I usually try to give my travel posts clever (in my opinion) or rhyming titles, but no rhyme comes to mind to name this report about my trip to Minneapolis.

Five months out of the year Minneapolis is an exciting, great-looking, interesting city 500 miles to the North of Kansas City. During the other seven months it closely resembles the Fortress of Solitude – a snow-covered and icy hellhole where people are using an elaborate tunnel-like system to move between the buildings without getting a frostbite. It also houses the first sign of Apocalypse – The Mall of America.

If you are driving to Minneapolis, the longest part of your route passes through Iowa – Khrushchev’s favorite state. Iowa is famous for its old people and various, not always pleasant, smells along the highway. Iowa’s population is so old that just by driving through we temporarily dropped the average age in the state to 68. To fight the smell problem Iowans installed gigantic fans in random places.

We thought it was a great idea.

Although the smells are still there, the views are out of this world.

We even got off the road to take some pictures.

But one doesn’t go to Minneapolis to take pictures of the Iowa wind farms. One goes to Minneapolis to browse through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Years ago me and another 16-year-old schmuck were sent to clean up a scrap yard. To our excitement someone forgot to lock up a welder. The rest is history – we welded together every piece of scrap metal that wasn’t already attached to anything while not wearing any eye protection. Three days later, when I was able to open my swollen eyes again, the scene was somewhat reminiscent of the Sculpture Garden.

But the main attraction is not the scrap metal art, it’s this tasty-looking cherry, which is likely to be the most photographed object in Minnesota.

Not everyone knows that the popular expression “popping a cherry” originated in Minneapolis, where most weddings are not considered legitimate until the wedding procession takes multiple photos in front of this iconic sculpture.

There are some other real sculptures in the Park and the grounds are beautiful.

And then it got very cool.

This church attracted our attention.

A nice lady upfront let us in, so the next few shots are titled Two Jews Walk Into a Church…

The Church owns and displays many pieces of museum-quality art.

10 commandments in the languages of major religions.

There is no time when you want to be closest to god like the time of a nuclear strike. That’s why having a fallout shelter at a church makes total sense…