Traveling Fool

Sorry, I couldn't resist the easy title; sometimes that the hardest part of this whole process. It was a beautiful sunny day in Minneapolis, and it seems like everyone was out, and many of them were at the Minneapolis Institute of Art checking out the preview of Egypt's Sunken Cities. It's an expansive exhibit, featuring relics collected from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea of the coast of Egypt from the sunken cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus. There is a very brief film at the beginning of the exhibit that talks what/where the cities were, what may have happened and how the items were retrieved. It's a lot of information in a short period of time, but it helps give you an understanding of the collection. There is also the audio guide (which we didn't use). The exhibit is in Minneapolis until April, but don't wait too long. Exhibitions like this tend to be very popular and tickets go fast. We started our day with brunch at Fig and Farro, a vegan/veget...

On what has become a yearly outing to explore our little corner of the world, my friend, TB2, and I ventured west of the Twin Cities to Alexandria to see the Kensington Runestone (I recommend reading Larry Millett's Sherlock Holmes and the Runestone Mystery ). In between, we stopped at many roadside attractions, so deemed by www.roadsideamerica.com (um, some of the designations are somewhat dubious as you'll, but still fun), and looked like geeky tourists taking pictures of metal farm animals, big hands, mushroom huts and more. The one big miss, at least for TB2, was Pottyville, a collection of outhouses, that we couldn't locate in Glenwood, MN. It seemed to be on private property, and neither one of us wanted to ask. Maybe another time. First, some more information on the runestone and the Runestone Museum: the runestone was discovered in 1898 by a farmer, and purported to be proof that Vikings settled in America in 1342. Many contend the stone is real, but many othe...

After starting the morning at 18th and Vine, I caught an Uber over to the National World War I Museum and Memorial. The fact that I was going here was not because I had planned way in advance like I did for everything else; I came across it through serendipity, and I am so glad I did. The museum is under the memorial, two exhibit halls and guarded by sphinxes. As you enter (I bought my combo ticket online), you cross over a field of poppies, and enter into an introductory film that explains the powder keg that was Europe in the early 1900s, capped off by the assassination of Emperor Franz Ferdinand. After that, you are free to wander the exhibits (although they are set up in roughly chronological order). I was amazed by the breadth of the collection; it wasn't just made up of American or Allied items, but also German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and from every front. It's not only guns, but uniforms, medals, medical equipment and tanks, jeeps, trucks, and a replica of a tre...