The "I Love Minneapolis" Walking Tour

Yesterday, I rolled all of my loves into one of the best days I've had all summer: Scott, walking and Minneapolis. We set off on our journey at 9:30 AM heading down Oliver Avenue South to Minnehaha Creek. When we hit Minnehaha Parkway, we headed towards Lake Harriet after a brief debate over creek vs. chain of lakes. Instead of sticking to the trail closest to the lake, we walked on the sidewalk for better views of the homes. We like to play "if we won the lottery" and choose our dream homes. We strolled through the Rose Garden and I found a few favorites:

After the Rose Garden, we headed over to the Peace Garden. Someday I want to walk through this garden at a slower pace and take in all of the sculptures. They are building a new bridge so perhaps after that is complete.

The heat was starting to get to us so we stopped at a favorite neighborhood restaurant, gigi's cafe. Scott had a mocha frostie and despite all of the tempations, I stuck with my much needed first serving of diet soda of the day.

Instead of walking the trail around Lake Calhoun, we walked north on Colfax Avenue for a view of the homes of the CARAG neighborhood. When we reached Lake Street, we headed west to Hennepin Avenue and were now in the Lowery East Neighborhood.

We hooked back up with the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway and continued our journey around Lake of the Isles.

I have been watching the construction of this house on Lake of the Isles for awhile. It seems to have its own skyway!

Instead of walking all the way around Lake of the Isles, we turned off onto Kenwood Parkway and I was inspired to capture some of my favorite homes. Because we don't walk in this neighborhood often (if ever), I felt like I was in a different city.



We continued along Kenwood Parkway and passed The Blake School and entered the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. We spent a bit of time looking around the Sculpture Garden and crossed the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge.

The flowers seemed particularly spectacular so I'll need to look back on these in January.

It was 1:30 PM and we were both slowing down so we decided to refuel at Joe's Garage. Scott with his pork cheesesteak and me with my tortilla-less southwestern vegetarian burger.

After leaving Loring Park, we headed north on Nicollet Mall and stopped at Peavey Plaza where there was a Vietnamese Community Summer Festival taking place. I tried to capture some of my favorite sights in downtown Minneapolis.

After leaving downtown, we went to the riverfront and headed west. We usually walk closer to the Guthrie and Mill City so this was a new route for us. We walked along the river until we crossed the Plymouth Avenue Bridge to get to Boom Island.

We crossed the old rail bridge which always causes me a bit of anxiety. I don't think it is particularly safe and when reached the end we discovered that part of the bridge is "patched" with plywood and if it were to give way, we'd fall through to the Mississippi!

We arrived at St. Anthony Main to find a Polish Festival (the Polish dog breeds caught our attention) and realized we were thirsty so stopped in at Aster Cafe. While sitting, we realized we should start heading back downtown to catch a bus since it was almost 4:30 which was 7 hours after we left our home.