After the movie on Thursday, Jeff and I stayed with Paul, who lives in Uptown Minneapolis. This was really convenient, because we could work from there for the morning, before heading into the city at lunch time.
My cousin, Drew, and his girlfriend, Asami (who was visiting from Japan) were in the city for the day. Drew wanted to show Asami around the Twin Cities. However, he lives in Eau Claire, WI, so he's not especially familiar with the cities, so he asked me to think of a sight-seeing plan.
We met up for lunch at Brit's Pub - I really like it because it's unique and has a really cool view of Minneapolis. Jeff and I had the 'Cricket Club' sandwich, which was really good! I think Drew and Asami liked the place as well.
From there, Drew, Asami, and I walked through Loring Park and over the bridge to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, while Jeff brought the car around.
Drew had shown Asami pictures of the Cherry and the Spoon online - it's a some-what iconic image of Minneapolis. So it was fun to walk around and see it in person.
After the sculpture garden, which was located right by the old Guthrie Theater, we headed to the new Guthrie Theater. The new Guthrie is a cool, really modern-looking building right on the Mississippi River. The windows are all different colors, so we got this crazy yellow-tinged image of the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi. (That's the same bridge where I stood to take pictures on the photo safari earlier in the week.)
Next we drove past the Metrodome. It was pretty crazy to see the 'Twins' sign pulled off - the outline of the letters are still visible.
We went back to Nicollet Avenue in downtown Minneapolis and went through the IDS tower to get into the skyway system. Minneapolis is almost entirely connected by skyways - so you don't need to walk outside in the winter - there are about eight miles of skyways. We visited the Foshay Tower - one of the oldest skyscrapers in Minneapolis - and went up to the top to enjoy the view.
After a bit more walking in the skyways, and a quick look at Target Field (the new home of the Twins), we decided to leave Minneapolis and make a quick trip to St. Paul. Our first stop was at the capitol building. It was under construction, but still very cool.
From there, we went to the Cathedral, and did a quick look around inside, before ending the tour and heading home!
On Friday evening, we went to Annette's apartment to hang out with her. We ordered pizza and decided to check out some British humor. We watched an episode of Jeeves & Wooster - it's a TV show about a rich young man (Wooster) and his 'valet' (Jeeves). Wooster is played by Hugh Laurie (from House!) and Jeeves is Stephen Frye. Unfortunately, the episode we watched was just not funny. We had to stretch to imagine exactly what anyone would find funny about this. Has anyone else seen this show - are we missing something?
After that, we watched an episode of 'A Bit of Frye and Laurie,' which is kind of like a Saturday Night Live-type show staring only Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. It was also very British-humor-y, but I liked it pretty well.
Finally, we watched a few episodes of IT Crowd. This is the British sitcom about a few people who work in the IT department of a company. All of the episodes we watched were really funny. Although, actually, I think one of the funniest thing is the menus on the DVD. The intro is a spoof of the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" video game intro, and then the menu screen looks exactly like the Mortal Combat video game menu screen. Awesome.
Oh, and we watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog... again. :)
Thursday late-night, Jeff and I met up with Paul, Mike, Zach, and Kevin to go see the midnight show of Inception. We actually saw it at the Minnesota Zoo IMAX, which I'd never been to before. I like the movie a lot - the concept is really cool, and some of the scenes are just really interesting. I love how the projections start to stare at the person who doesn't belong. I also really liked that they structured the movie in such a way that you need to figure out what's going on and how everything works as it goes along, rather than just explaining it outright. However, this also means you really need to pay attention, and it is definitely somewhat confusing at times. (It kind of reminded me of Momento in this way.) Though I liked it overall, I thought it was missing a little weight - I didn't think the movie helped you connect with the characters very closely - maybe because you don't know exactly what's going on for a decent amount of the movie. Still definitely worth seeing - maybe even worth seeing twice.
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