Saturday, September 7, 2013

Things to do in the Twin Cities

Life is Good: we're exploring!

If you are in the Twin Cities and looking for something fun to do, check out the Western Sculpture Park in St Paul. Remember our "staycation" I told you about? Well, when we decided to take a few days of dedicated family time, we decided to head over to St. Paul for some exploring. There is so much to do in the Twin Cities and we feel blessed for that. It is such a progressive, innovative, and creative community. The public art abounds. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is one of our faves, so when we discovered that St. Paul had one, too, we had to check it out!

Western Sculpture Park is located in between some apartment buildings, so the setting feels very urban. The sculptures are really fantastic and vary in style.



Our little guys loved running back and forth between the art, pretending to go into outer space, and "looking into the giant telescope". (I thought it was a megaphone!)


This sculpture was perfect for climbing and exploring...

It didn't have its name on it, but we called it "Hi and hello!"


We loved the giant bunny, too!



I feel like this post needs a disclaimer, though. As much as we loved the Western Sculpture Park, it wasn't ideal. We found a few pieces of trash and sadly, some graffiti.  


(This is where I would like to say, "Shame on you, Alexis!" But I will refrain. Or not!) It is so disappointing to me to see someone deface art like this. One piece, that our little boys thought looked like a ship sailing across the ocean, had three or four names written on it multiple times. I wondered how the artist would feel if he or she knew someone had written on their art. It was a real bummer. 

I also mentioned that the sculpture park feels very urban. The location is right off of a busy street. It is adjacent to an apartment complex's tattered and sun-dulled playground. It had some litter and graffiti when we visited. It isn't storybook. However, if you love art and keep a good eye on your kids, the experience was worth it. Just bring Purell with you! ; )

We worked up an appetite at the sculpture park, so we headed over a little further east to downtown St. Paul in search of food trucks, which was Grant's favorite part of the day! We settled on Vietnamese pork sandwiches from Asian Invasion...



This was quite possibly the best pork sandwich I will ever have in my entire life! The pork was juicy. And layered in between a soft, Vietnamese bun, was a medley of thinly-sliced cucumber, cilantro, mint, daikon, cabbage, and sriracha. Yummmmmmmmmm. With a capital UMMMMMMM!






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