USA - Minneapolis and Seattle
- seanick9
- Nov 11, 2025
- 6 min read
Minneapolis
Our first stop back in the USA was Minneapolis, as a good friend and colleague of Nick’s was getting married there in October. Our flight from Rome to MSP was uneventful, and we picked up a rental car to use for a week in Minneapolis before the wedding.
We rented a cute AirBnB in Lowry Hill / Calhoun Isles neighborhood. The hosts had remodeled a 3 story house with a basement into 4 units, setting them up with amenities well beyond the basics. The main floor had the hosts themselves but the top floor and downstairs were rentable units, and we met the mom who was staying on the second floor unit. Our unit on the top floor was delightful! They set up a coffee nook which had 5 different types of coffee machines, as well as providing some freshly brewed cold brew coffee, granola and other treats ready for us when we arrived. The basement had a fully outfitted laundry room with two washers and two dryers, and our unit had a record player with a good selection of records to listen to. This was an incredibly welcoming space, and we enjoyed staying there as a home base to explore the area.
Once we’d got ourselves all unpacked, We had a few days to kill, so we went and saw a few sights in the area, primarily those with kid-friendly activities.
Mall of America
I’d heard the Mall of America had a roller coaster inside it, so of course when I knew we were going to be in Minneapolis, it was high on my list of places to visit. Separately, we discussed seeing a movie with Emily - she’d never actually been to a movie theater before, and Gabby’s Dollhouse (one of her favorite shows) had a movie coming out, so we decided to take her to see it. When we were looking at movie theaters, Anna noticed that Mall of America had a movie theater, so we decided to go see the movie there. It ended up being a whole day affair - we moved the movie to later in the day so we could eat lunch and then go to the roller coaster beforehand. Would I recommend the movie? It wasn’t really my favorite kids movie but Emily seemed to like it.
Lunch was at the Rainforest Cafe. I used to love going to the Rainforest Cafe at Southcenter mall in Seattle, but they had closed down a few years ago so I never got a chance to take Emily there. As expected, she loved the experience as well as the food! Of course we told them we were celebrating and got pictures taken. After the lunch, we went to the theme park inside the mall- Nickelodeon Universe theme park - for a few hours. This was quite a bit bigger and more interesting than I thought it would be. They had a few big coasters and lots of small kiddie rides as well. I took Emily on a few of them, including two of the big coasters. She was just short of the 48” necessary to ride the biggest rides, but we did ride the orange “pumpkin” coaster a few times, as well as played for a couple hours in the Paw Patrol playground area. While Emily and I were having fun at the theme park, Anna took the time to go shopping around the mall!
Minnesota Children’s Museum
The Minnesota Children’s museum was amazing. They had the most interesting exhibits of any of the children’s museums we’ve visited. The first room was the “Imaginopolis”, which had a large wooden skeleton (of a whale? A dinosaur? unclear) that had velcro on each of the spines so you could attach colored felt scales in any way you saw fit, a giant bean-bag pile, drawing stuff, costumes such as fairy wings which Emily is always a huge fan of, and my favorite was this audio-mixer box that you could independently adjust the volume of a variety of different jungle sounds - crickets, water flowing, frogs, bird calls and more to create your own jungle soundtrack.
Another room had a giant conveyor belt system that you could route and deliver foam “packages” to the correct recipients, by turning the belts and using rollers. Emily wanted to stay there for a long time. There was a car wash exhibit with lots of foam suds and water play, and obviously large play structures with slides and ball pits etc.
A third room has a fan system that launches ping pong balls through tubes that you can assemble into any kind of launchers that you can imagine, aiming them at some metal pots hanging from the ceiling makes a satisfying clang when you score a direct hit.
We were there for hours and I think we only saw half the rooms. This is certainly worth a visit and if we were there for longer we would have come back.
Southdale mall
The Mall of America was a great place to spend a day, but it was also quite overwhelming with the size and variety of stores. Anna picked a different mall to visit for a smaller shopping day so we ended up going to Southdale, which had some of Anna’s favorite places to shop such as J Crew and Lululemon. Emily got to pick a toy at the toy store and I restocked some of her art supplies there as well. Unfortunately there wasn’t much in the way of play areas for kids though!
Great parks - In particular, Emily loved the Kenwood park playground which had a zipline as well as a handful of other fun play structures, and we went back there almost every morning!
We also were happy to watch the Twin Cities Marathon which ran right by our AirBnB - but we were only able to clap and cheer for so long, so after about a half hour we went back inside with raw hands!
House prices
We were blown away by how much house you could get for the same money - we saw many 4000 square foot places for under a million, in a beautiful area of the city. Of course the weather during the winter is frightful, and job prospects probably aren’t quite as nice, but if you really wanted to buy a nice house for less money I can see the appeal.
Seattle
Our return to Seattle was short and quite busy - we had to unpack our souvenirs and clothes, do loads of laundry, collect boxes of stuff we shipped back to a friend, and visit our storage unit to re-allocate the clothes we planned to bring with us to Australia. It was nice to catch up with family and a limited number of friends, but with all the activities we had each day it felt rushed and anything but relaxing. One happy surprise was that our baseball team, the Seattle Mariners, had made it to the playoffs and so Nick was able to go with a friend to one of the games! It was a long one as it went into extra innings and my feet were quite tired after standing for 7 hours straight. Nobody wanted to sit down for the whole game so we had to stand to see anything! We did win, and did make it to the AL Championship series, but unfortunately did not win the last game of that series against the Blue Jays, so our drought as the only team never to make it to the World Series continues.
While in Seattle we were able to visit a handful of our favorite restaurants- some American Diner Breakfast with unlimited coffee refills at Blocks Cafe, spicy Mexican food at El Camion, Chupacabra and also Red Star Taco Bar, fish and chips at the Barking Dog Alehouse, and Vietnamese from the Momo Express food truck at Urban Family Brewing. These were all great visits, making us feel like home- but certainly reminded us that Seattle is one of the most expensive places in the world to eat!
After visiting my mom and siblings, and Anna saw her brother, we re-packed our bags and headed off to Australia for a few months!
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