Mall of America

This week we went to visit the Mall of America.  It's about a 15-20 minute drive from our house.  We spent nearly the whole day there and had a lot of fun.  It's the largest mall in the United States by area, and it's the largest in the world by number of visitors annually.  I was worried about the crowds, but it really wasn't that bad.  There was plenty of free parking.  There are several large parking garages that are connected to the mall.

In the middle of the mall there is an amusement park that used to be called "Camp Snoopy" when I was little.  Now it is "Nickelodeon Universe".  All the rides are Spongebob, Dora, TMNT, or Rugrats themed.   We didn't go on any of them, but they looked really fun.  There was a roller coaster where the car has only four people in it and it spins around while you're going along the tracks.  We'll have to try it out next time.

It had nearly every store you could think of.  Kim liked the American Girl store, where she found a doll that looked just like Joslyn, and the store Peeps and Company.  The candy store was pretty fun.  They had more Peeps and Mike and Ikes products than I've ever seen before.  There was even a scented Peeps pillow.  It smelled wonderful.  The free samples were also very nice.

This peep rotates so that it is dipped in chocolate!

The huge variety pack of peeps!

All the flavors of Mike and Ikes you can imagine!

Isaac's favorite store was the LEGO Imagination Center.  There was a big open area for people to just play with the LEGOs.  Hanging in the wall were portraits made from flat one by one LEGO pieces.  The best part was that inside and on top of the store were ridiculously big LEGO creations.  There were life sized LEGO sculptures of a Storm Trooper, dragon, helicopter, sabertooth tiger and caveman, explorers, and a robot that is mind blowingly big.  It's 10 meters tall, weighs 6 tons, and was created using 2.8 million LEGO bricks.

This moose is made out of the single square Lego pieces!

They had some pretty good deals for the end of summer.  There was an Apple store and right across from it was a Microsoft store. At the Foreign Exchange everything was at least 70% off. Everything in the store was 20 dollars or less.  And, there is no tax on clothes in Minnesota.

Other notable attractions included Ikea, an aquarium full of manta rays, and a movie theater.   There were quite a few restaurants.  There fast food places like you'd find in a normal mall food court, but also a lot of sit down places.  We ate a the Hard Rock Cafe.  The local legendary burger here has macaroni and cheese on it.  I thought it was pretty good.

This was Joslyn's plate of Mac n Cheese! It was the first time she's ordered off the kid's menu!

Before the mall opened in 1992, there was a stadium there. The Twins and the Vikings played there. When you walk through the mall, they have a gold home plate where the old home plate used to be. The Twins had a hall of famer who hit a super long home run, so they also kept the seat that he hit the ball to. It's way up high, bolted to a wall.

So when we got to the mall, we saw signs everywhere advertising that Carly Rae Jepsen was coming to the mall that night! There was a little meet and greet too, based on a first come first serve basis, so there were lots of people lined up for it all day long. We decided that we wanted to stay for the performance, not because we're big fans, but we just thought it'd be cool. But the performance wasn't very long, and she mashed most of her songs together.

So we want to do a food, drink or recipe we tried each week.  This week, we went to the farmers market, and they had orange and yellow watermelon. We'd never heard of them before, so we got one of each to try. The yellow watermelon was very sweet, but it had a very different flavor from red watermelon. I think the orange is just a cross between the yellow and red kinds, because it had the sweetness of the yellow, but the flavor of the red. They were both very good, though. Anyway, the watermelons were too big for just the three of us to eat before they spoiled, so we cut most of it into cubes and put them in the freezer. They are great to suck on when it gets really hot (especially with no air conditioning!) They were like popsicles, but better! We even used them as ice cubes. We tried them in white grape juice and 7-up. We both really liked it in the grape juice.