Halfway into my most interesting Minnesota layover

Howdy folks.

It's currently Friday afternoon and I'm sitting up in my hotel room at the Radisson in downtown St. Paul looking out into the busy streets below as the lunch hour is upon the city. From the 11th floor I can see quite a bit, including a parking lot across the street on top of a lowrise.. but the rest of my view is of high rises and a hot summer day. I take of my sip of my starbucks and reflect on how this trip began, because it was not as peaceful and relaxed as I am now.

We had a great flight here, had a nice tail wind and arrived early. But then everything went downhill. We arrive to the airport and are sent taxiing all over the place at the airport to arrive at the customs building and we proceed to wait... and wait... and wait. We are now quite a ways past our customs time and both our office back in Calgary and some of the St. Paul airport people are trying to figure out what is happening with customs. They should have been at the airport to meet us. Well, it turns out they went to the wrong airport! It was now going to be 40mins for the inspector to make it over to our airport and we were not allowed to disembark our aircraft. So we actually closed everything back up and started the engine so we could get the air conditioning working. It was a hot evening in Minnesota that night. Finally.. after about 1.5hrs of waiting our inspector shows up, apologizes and we are on our way fairly quickly. We unload the plane and get the more than drunken passangers underway (what else is there to do on the airplane while waiting.. drink booze! all of it!)

So we get a ride from the airport service people to the hotel. We arrive at about 11pm and are told by the front desk staff that the hotel has been oversold that night due to a major glitch with central reservations and they are looking for another hotel for us to spend the night free of charge. There was a huge Best Buy convention in town and therefore every single hotel was booked solid that night! They found us a bed and breakfast historic inn way on the outskirts of town to spend the night. So after a 30min drive into the boonies we arrive. At the historic Afton House Inn. Not a bad little place, but certainly not the classy Radisson I was expecting. It was a long night and there was no way I was going to make the "breakfast" portion of this accomodation. So at the last possible second we check out of the bed and breakfast at 11am and call a taxi to take us back to the Radisson as they now have rooms for us.

The gongshow continues.. 2.5hrs later and after many irrate phone calls the taxi finally arrives! We weren't in a rush anywhere so we were just checking out the local little shops in the quaint little town. Had an icecream cone while we waiting.. mmm.. Mint Chocolate Chip. So then the cabbie gets lost on the way back to the hotel, it's quite the gongshow.. but whatever.. we helped him find it and eventually did make our way back to the Radisson. The hotel was paying for the cab ride back so we didn't care, we were getting a good look at the Minnesota countryside and city.

So when we check in they are very apologetic about the whole gongshow we had to go through and then this trip took a turn for the "much" better. They gave us upgraded deluxe rooms with business setups (chairs/desks/hi speed) I also have a kingsized sleep number bed and a great view from up top high. We also received coupons for free breakfasts for the rest of our stay ($7.50 value times four) and 4 free drink tickets for the bar downstairs! So... not a shabby deal out of all of this!

That first day back in the Radisson we just took a little walk arond downtown (so hot though) so we came back to the hotel for dinner and drinks and turned in early. Yesterday we awoke early for our free breakfast and then hopped on a bus to head to the biggest mall in the world... the Mall of America. It is one huge assed mall. It makes the West Edmonton Mall look small!! We walked through the mall and checked it all out and ended up going to Famous Dave's bbq for a late lunch/early dinner. Had a huge assed beer with it as well... ahhh.. layovers.. :) We then opted to go for a movie and watched "Wedding Crashers" pretty damn funny. Then it was back on the bus and an early night back in the hotel room. Watched the tv for a bit and then it was off to bed.

Today has been pretty relaxing as well.. breakfast again this am, then off to do a bit of food/drink shopping around the downtown core here and now I'm back for a relaxing afternoon in the room. Might get the exercise room a little later, have a nap and then I do believe I will get sloshed out of my mind tonight.. :) I still have some free drink tickets remaining!

We leave on Sunday to head back to Calgary so still a couple of days to tour around the city a bit more, some neat buildings around here with quite a bit of history. Very warm too. A nice trip all in all... feels more like an all expenses paid vacation though.. ahh she's a difficult job.. but somebody's got to do it!