Shop Til You Drop - Day 1

This morning I woke up at 3:45, a full hour before my alarm went off. At 4:30 I figured I wasn't going to fall back asleep so I got up and showered, dressed and took Rocky out before waking Debbie at 5:00. We were on our way to the airport at 5:15.

By the time we got to the airport, the drizzle that we had at home had become a mix of rain and snow. I just love sitting on a plane when they spray with deicer. It's almost as much fun as having a screaming infant in the row behind you.

We arrived in Minnesota at 10:00 CDT and miraculously our bag (we stuffed our carry-on bags in one big suitcase that we checked) was waiting on the carousel when we reached baggage claim. We were at our hotel at 10:30 and at the Mall of American at 11:05. Now, when we go mall exploring there are certain rules...We started at the top (well, in this case we went to the 3rd floor first). We walk the entire floor, including down all the side "streets".
The first thing that caught our attention was the amusement park in the center of the mall. As we went up the escalator we got a different view of the many roller coasters. It was mind boggling. Our first destination was a restaurant called "Noodles" for lunch. I had Japanese udon noodles with grilled steak and Debbie had penne pasta with a rosa sauce and grilled chicken. It was very tasty and just enough to fill the void and get us ready to shop til we dropped. We continued walking around the 3rd floor making note of places we would go back to. We shared a Bubble Tea, watched some mall cops (and dog) in action. It didn't take us long to get the lay of the land. We found some really neat shops (a bead shop, Archivers scrapbook shop, lots of game stores, as well as the standards found everywhere, but a little bigger and more stocked than our local versions).

We headed down to the 2nd floor and continued our circuit. Rule #2...you can look across the floor, but you can't peek over the railing to the shops on the lower level. It was very hard to do on the 2nd floor. Big surprise of the day was Debbie's reaction to the American Girl Store. She never had an American Girl Doll but she was completely captivated by the dolls, the furniture and the beauty parlor for dolls. Who'd have guessed?

We checked out the movies for future reference. We had dinner at Bubba Gump's. We had a coupon for a free appetizer if we ordered 2 entrees so we ordered a ton of food and ate it all. We had an assortment of shrimp, trout stuffed with crabmeat and an artichoke and spinach appetizer with chips. Then we ran to catch the van back across the street to our hotel.

Now we're in bed watching Monk and luxuriating in the five pillows and an entire queen size bed for each of us.