On the Road Again

Wow, it's been a while since my last post! It's been a busy month for me, one during which I was on the road a couple of times. Three weeks ago, Karen and I managed to get away for a long weekend trip to Minnesota. My high school friend Chris was getting married in Minneapolis, so we headed back to my home state for the wedding and took the opportunity to spend some time with my mom and sister. It was Karen's first trip to the Land of 10,000+ Lakes, so I wanted to take her around for a tour of the Twin Cities. We checked out the most obvious tourist attraction, the Mall of America, on our first evening in town. Due to the timing of our flights and the wedding events, we only had one full day to take in the scenery, but we were able to fit in a tour of downtown Minneapolis and take a nice drive around Lake Calhoun. We also drove around the University of Minnesota campus and saw the site of the collapsed bridge. In the afternoon, we took a long walk in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden next to the Walker Art Center and enjoyed the fabulously warm and sunny weather.

While we were there, I wanted to introduce Karen to some regional food specialties. Unfortunately, our trip took place a week after the State Fair ended; otherwise, we probably would have sampled some food on a stick. I wasn't sure where we could go out for some authentic hot dish, so instead I decided to take her out for a pannekoeken breakfast. Despite living in one of the world's food meccas, I have no idea where one can get these Dutch pancakes in the Bay Area, but you can definitely find a few restaurants in the Twin Cities, such as Pannekoeken Huis, that serve these Dutch treats. The location near my mom's house recently closed, but fortunately there is another location not too far away. There were a lot of pannekoeken selections from which to choose. I settled on the bacon pannekoeken, while Karen went with the rhubarb special and added in some fresh strawberries. My mom ordered a non-pannekoeken dish, much to my surprise, as she missed a chance to order her favorite banana cream Dutch pancake. While the pannekoekens were tasty, I must admit that I was slightly disappointed that our server didn't run out of the kitchen, with hot skillets in hand, announcing the arrival of our order to the rest of the diners. Then again, it would have been quite amusing to see our tall, tattooed waiter calling out "Pannekoeken!" as he delivered our meal.