A Minnesota Wedding Road Trip

This is a busy summer - summer school, lots of weekends in Saint Peters, Sommer and Justin's wedding. It seems life is a-bustlin'. So Matt and I created a vacation around my friend Christa's wedding in Minneapolis instead of planning a long trip for this summer. I'd never been and Matt had only visited briefly so it was fun to explore a new city. Minneapolis was so fun - clean, easy to navigate, and full of great areas and things to do.

We did the math and the cost of driving + a midway hotel stop was cheaper than flying so that's the route we took. With AAA map in hand and a hot tip from a friend to stop in Pella, Iowa, we drove to a city a few miles away and stopped for the night on Friday July, 1st. Bright and early, we drove a few miles to the very cute Dutch settled town of Pella. Specifically, we went there for the Jaarsma Bakery on the square. Even more specifically, we were headed straight for a Dutch Letter. If you've never had one, you must. We happily started our day with this dense, but flaky and almond paste filled delicacy. We both put it on our list of places to return to soon.

And then, since all we ever seem to do when we go on vacation is scope out the good eats, we spent an afternoon comparing the famed Minneapolis Juicy (Jucy) Lucy. We learned about this goodness on the Travel Channel. Apparently two places claim to be the original creator of this cheese stuffed burger. We started with Matt's Bar - they spell it "Jucy Lucy." It is a very small place with only one waitress and a small grill station right behind the bar. We didn't even stop at the hotel before meeting Laura and Rachael and jumping right in at Matt's. The four of us split a couple of beers, two Jucy Lucys and two orders of fries (you know, to save room to try the other "original" Lucy). We forgot to take pictures of any food this weekend, dangit. Not cool since eating is pretty much all we did :-)

After Matt's DELICIOUS burger and fries, we headed over to the 5 - 8 Club to try their version. We ordered the exact same burger to make a fair comparison - even though the 5-8 Club offered a variety of cheeses while Matt's Bar only had one, we decided to eliminate any variable that might skew our study. And we have to say, what Matt's Bar had in atmosphere, efficiency, cool, no fuss attitude, and awesome dive bar food the 5-8 Club lacked entirely. We were disappointed. Which means....

there was a very clear winner! Way to go Matt's Bar!

After a quick stop at the hotel, we hit up a Twins game at Target Field.

And ended the day with a hotel room gathering of old MU Tigers before bed.

On Sunday afternoon, we were expected for the wedding, but that left the morning free for sniffing out a great brunch. Matt, Rachael and I found Al's Breakfast in the Dinkytown neighborhood. We were in absolutely no way disappointed. We had to wait for almost two hours in a line outside to get into this 15 seater countertop joint. After some great music, some smoked cheddar and bacon omelettes, hash browns, and some FANTASTIC blueberry pancakes we emerged stuffed and happy.

Then came the wedding followed by a reception that took place on the rooftop of the Historic Grain Belt Brewery! It was such a surprisingly cool evening after a hot summer day and a rooftop overlooking the city was the perfect location to enjoy it.

We had this gorgeous view of Minneapolis skyline all night.

The happy couple. Congrats Christa and James!

There are those MU Tigers again. All of us began as Journalism majors. I'm the only one who dropped that title.

Laura and Rachael - our partners in Jucy Lucy comparisons, hotel rooms and crime.

Matt and Daniela had quite the chemistry on the dance floor. Break it down, white man overbite!!

Dear Minneapolis,

Thanks for the mini-vacation filled with friends and food. We loved our time up north and hope to return soon.

Carolyn and Matt